


More Than I Could Ever Promise

by Linsky



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst, Arranged Marriage, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mpreg, Pining, virgin!patrick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 23:31:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 47,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17273228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linsky/pseuds/Linsky
Summary: Patrick is slowly falling in love with the most irritating of his bodyguards. It’s unfortunate that the peace of two kingdoms depends on Patrick’s marriage to someone else.





	More Than I Could Ever Promise

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilery note: Patrick does not sleep with anyone who is not Jonny in this story. I mention this because I know it’s something I would worry about. :)
> 
> A million thanks to [namesintherafters](https://namesintherafters.tumblr.com/) for the AMAZING art and to the Blackhawks Big Fic Energy challenge organizers for putting it all together!!
> 
> No actual countries or historical time periods were harmed in the making of this fic. Um also I don’t know anything about swords k thx bye. /slinks away
> 
> ([tumblr](https://linskywords.tumblr.com/))

Patrick would like it stated for the record that he is not afraid of his wedding night.

Obviously it’ll be the first time he’s had sex—his parents would have killed him if he’d done anything before this. But hey, from everything he hears, it’s supposed to be pretty fun. And his mom gave him a really horrifyingly awkward lesson in what to expect, and his old nursemaid Isabella gave him an even more thorough and horrifyingly awkward one, so at least he’s prepared. And maybe King Gareth isn’t the kind of person you look at and think, _gotta jump on that,_ but he was married for decades before this, so he has to be pretty good at it, right?

The point is: Patrick is ready for this.

It’s a really long carriage ride back to Rangeland; it’s been four hours already, and they’re still barely inside the borders. It’s going to be crazy late by the time they get there. Patrick rolls his fingers over the little bottle of unguent Isabella gave him, the one he’s keeping at the top of his bag.

King Gareth is across from him, still in his formal clothes from the wedding, going through correspondence. He’s been in Kanedom for a couple months, signing the peace agreement and arranging for the wedding; he’s probably behind on everything in his kingdom. Patrick’s a little curious about what he’s reading—he’s getting a little bored, staring at the trees out the window—but he doesn’t look, even if maybe he could. It is his kingdom too, now.

Patrick hopes Gareth will give him time to prepare himself. It’ll be fine either way, but it’ll be better if he has time to prepare.

It’s getting too dark to see any of the scenery of his new country out the window, so Patrick dozes a little as the carriage bounces along. He wakes up when the carriage stops in a courtyard, and he stumbles out and tries not to blink sleepily as he’s presented to Gareth’s chamberlain.

“We are so honored to welcome you to Rangeland, your highness,” the guy says, bending over his hand, and Patrick has a weird jolt when he remembers that he belongs here now. He’s Patrick, Prince Consort of Rangeland.

“We’ll be going straight to our rooms,” Gareth says, and the chamberlain nods and a pack of footmen descends on the luggage.

Patrick is still carrying his little satchel, the one he had with him in the carriage. He could give it to a footman, probably, but it makes him feel better to hold it. It has the farewell letters from his sisters in the bottom, and there’s the unguent at the top.

Probably Gareth will give him time to prepare himself. They’re married, after all. Gotta be some incentives for Gareth to do it right—more sex after this, for one thing.

The castle is so quiet as they move through it. It must be after midnight by now; maybe one in the morning, or two. Patrick misses the huge clock that used to chime over Kane Castle. Jackie hated it—said the chiming kept her from falling asleep—but Patrick loved it. A friendly voice, awake with him, no matter the hour.

These halls are silent. All the servants in bed, probably, and everyone respecting the informality of a nighttime arrival. Nothing to keep them from their beds.

Patrick wonders if he’ll like it.

His mom pulled him aside a couple of days before the betrothal was finalized. They’d already talked about the marriage a lot, of course: the political benefits and drawbacks, the reasons it had to be him, the changes it would bring to the kingdom to have Erica as heir instead of Patrick. Those had been discussions with the whole family, or with Patrick’s parents and counselors and scribes consulting legal texts and scribbling notes. But this time it was just the queen pulling Patrick into one of her sitting rooms, no one else with them. She had sat down on the sofa with him and asked, delicately, about his inclination.

It had taken Patrick a moment or two to realize what she was asking—not about giving up the throne of Kanedom or going to another kingdom or even about Gareth himself, but—

“Yeah, I, uh, don’t think it’ll be a problem,” he stammered, heat rushing to his cheeks. He didn’t tell her about how he felt sometimes when he caught a glimpse of the guards changing, or the way he sometimes thought about the breadth of their shoulders and the thickness of their arms and thighs when he lay alone in his room at night. He didn’t tell her how he’d felt when he was twelve and his parents sat him down for the talk about how he probably had the ability to bear children, like all the men in his father’s line, and how he had to be careful around both boys and girls—didn’t tell tell her about the thrill that went through him when he thought about that.

Whatever she saw in his face, that day in her sitting room, she didn’t ask any more questions.

Gareth leads the way through the castle, and they get to their chambers after enough twists and turns that Patrick can’t quite follow them in his fuzzy-headed state. He’s not sleepy, definitely not, but tired enough that he would be dragging if it weren’t for the adrenaline. The royal bedchambers are a lot like his parents’ chambers back home: a guardroom, then a receiving room, then a bedroom, with a door that leads next door to the consort’s chambers. Patrick’s chambers.

Weird to think of himself as filling the same role his mom fills. He finally got taller than her last year, but it still feels like way too much of a kid for this.

Patrick follow Gareth past the couple of guards in the guardroom and into the receiving room. It’s nice: a little fancier than Patrick’s dad’s, maybe, from what Patrick can tell in the low light of the footmen’s lamps. Patrick’s not really looking that closely. The bedroom is beyond: a huge four-poster bed right in the center, facing them. Its drapes are heavy enough that Patrick can’t even see all the way into its shadowy depths.

The footmen set the luggage on the floor and a lamp on the table. One of them opens a case and hangs up the suits of clothing inside: one, two, three, four, five, so fast Patrick’s barely had a chance to figure out where to settle. The other cases are gone just as quickly, unpacked or stowed away somewhere Patrick can’t see. Then the door shuts, and it’s just him and Gareth in the flickering lamplight.

Patrick wonders if he should undress. Gareth is across the room taking his gloves off, loosening one finger at a time. Patrick watches him peel the leather off and thinks: he held those hands today. Those hands clasped Patrick’s at the altar in Kanedom where they both pledged their lifelong union. Soon, those hands will be on his body. He feels a little shivery, like his clothing is too loose and brushing against him.

“The servants will be unpacking your things now,” Gareth says. He’s not looking at Patrick; he’s undoing his collar by the nightstand. Soon Patrick will put his hands there, on the bare skin he’s exposing. If Gareth likes that. Maybe he doesn’t like that. “You might want to stay in here until they’re finished.”

“Right, sure,” Patrick says. He’s not sure what the usual practice is for sleeping in your husband’s bed. He knows his parents do it often enough—or did, at least, when he and his sisters were still so young they’d come in and bury under the covers with them on a lazy morning—but it’s obviously not the rule, or there wouldn’t be two bedrooms in the first place. Gareth probably wouldn’t want that right away, anyway.

Now Gareth’s taking off his shoes, unlacing the heavy travel boots. Patrick wonders if he should cross the room to help, or—he tries to read in Gareth’s face whether he wants Patrick to make a move here, but Gareth’s expression is calm and still, nothing like the animation Patrick’s used to seeing across a ballroom or a banquet hall, Gareth seeking him out and plying his favor. It’s hard to read.

Patrick decides to wait, play it safe. Gareth will tell him what he wants.

Gareth finishes with his boots and straightens up. It’s pretty much just his tunic and pants to take off now, and Patrick’s heart speeds up a little, anticipating.

“They’re very efficient,” Gareth says.

“Huh?” Patrick says. He has no idea who they’re talking about.

“The servants,” Gareth says, a trace of impatience in his voice. “They’re very efficient.”

Patrick looks at the door, then back at Gareth. Is he saying…but that can’t be what he means. Patrick knows how this night is supposed to go. They aren’t really properly married until they’ve—

But Gareth is raising an eyebrow at him. “In fact, they’re probably done now,” he says, his voice crisp with the fatigue of a long journey, and Patrick gets the picture. Of course: they’re both too tired to do anything now. It makes sense to wait.

Patrick stumbles a little with fatigue as he goes to the door that connects their suites. On the other side, he clicks the latch into place and feels his shoulders go down.

It’s not relief, exactly. It’s just—Gareth was right: they’re too tired from the journey. Patrick will be readier tomorrow night.

There’s a fire in the hearth and a little oil lamp flickering on the bedside table, and Patrick uses the light to get into his sleeping clothes. They’re new—part of his trousseau. He remembers trying them on, his mother saying how much Gareth would like him in them. Erica had squealed that he wouldn’t need them and Patrick had blushed, uncomfortable heat traveling down into his belly.

The unfamiliar fabric is stiff with starch. Patrick climbs into bed and flinches a little at the chill of the sheets—good linen with a heavy comforter on top, but the heat of the fire hasn’t reached them yet.

At home Isabella would have heated a brick for him and wrapped it in the old flowered cloth that had been around since Patrick was born. He remembers looking at it last night and thinking how strange it would be not to see it anymore, but he hadn’t thought he’d need a hot brick tonight. Hadn’t really thought beyond the moment when Gareth would take off his clothes and pull him into his bed.

He guesses that still waits for him tomorrow.

The room feels really big. Patrick always had his own room, as the only boy, but it was in a suite with his sisters, and sometimes on cold nights they would sneak into each other’s beds and curl up together. Patrick wonders if they’re doing that now: if the three of them have piled in together without him, breath damp on each other’s necks, Jackie complaining about Jess’s cold feet. If they miss having him there.

He curls himself around his pillow in the center of his big empty bed and goes to sleep.

***

He gets up in the morning and doesn’t have anything to do.

Patrick’s had a schedule every day since he was a little kid. If it wasn’t lessons, it was patrols or council or petitions or justice. And he hasn’t started a day without sword practice since he was too young to pick one up. His sisters always complained when Isabella woke them up when it was barely light, but he liked the feeling of his muscles stretching first thing in the morning.

Here, he wakes up when a servant slips in quietly and leaves a breakfast tray, and as he eats he realizes he doesn’t know where to go next.

There was really only one thing on his agenda, when he thought about being in Rangeland: being married. He figured he would find out what that involved when he got here. But now he’s here and no knowledge has magically appeared in his head.

Probably the thing to do is to ask his husband. But it seems like it would be kind of rude, bursting into the king’s bedroom first thing in the morning without being asked—even if Patrick is married to him now—so he decides to keep himself busy and wait till the king sends for him.

He finishes his breakfast first of all, and then he pokes around the room until he figures out where the servants have stowed all his stuff. His receiving room is nice: a couple of comfortable sofas and a big oaken desk with a big empty bookshelf behind it, like maybe he’s going to turn out to secretly be a scholar or something. He finds his training sword, but it doesn’t seem like a great place for sword practice. He gets dressed in his court clothes instead and uses some of the nice paper at the desk to write a letter to his family.

It’s hard to think of what to write. Nothing has happened yet, really. He tells them that the journey was fine and he arrived safely, and he jokes about how weird it is to be living in the consort’s rooms. Then he feels like he should say something about Gareth, only there isn’t really anything to say—not that he would tell them about the wedding night even if it had happened, but Gareth is his husband, and it feels wrong not to mention him.

He ends up saying something dumb about how he’s looking forward to building a marriage. His sisters will say it’s boring and cry out for details, but by the time they get a question to him he’ll have a lot more details to tell, so.

It’s not a very long letter. He did just see them yesterday. He folds it and seals it—a new seal, one with the Rangeland badger on it—and rings the bell for a servant to come get it.

“Will that be all, sire?” the footman asks, bowing over the tray, and Patrick wishes, for a moment, that it were one of his servants, one of the ones in Kane Castle who’ve known him since he was a kid and can somehow smirk even through a “your highness.” Patrick’s always liked talking with the servants. But this guy isn’t even making eye contact with him.

“Yes, thank you,” he says. Then the footman is gone, and he really has nothing to do.

The view out his window is kind of nice. It’s an arrow slit, so Patrick can’t see much, but there’s city and sky and some distant hills and if he angles himself right, he can see the soldiers training in the yard below. Patrick watches them for a while. His muscles feel weird and unused, and the exercises look grueling and also exactly like what he wants to be doing right now. He wonders if he’ll be allowed to join in. He and Gareth didn’t talk much about his role in the kingdom—but maybe that can be part of it. Maybe Patrick will bring it up when they talk.

No one’s called for him yet. Patrick’s sword kit has been tucked into a corner of the wardrobe, and he changes into rougher clothes and does what drills he can in the space before he flops down on the bed and stares at the ceiling for a bit. He’s drifting off a little, staring at a crack in the plaster that’s shaped kind of like a turnip, when a knock on the door makes him spring up.

It’s just another footman, with his lunch. “Hey,” Patrick says when the guy is obviously going to leave without saying anything. “Sorry, um—do you know what the king is doing at the moment?”

The footman looks startled to be asked. “I beg your pardon, your highness, but I don’t.”

“Okay,” Patrick says. “Do you know what he’d normally be doing at this time of day?”

Now the guy looks kind of frightened, like something terrible might happen if he gets it wrong. “It’s…possible…he’s with his counselors?”

With his counselors—of course. He’s been away for the better part of two months; of course he needs to check in with them.

Patrick wonders if there’s something he should be doing while the king meets with his counselors, and he thinks about asking, but the servant already looks like he’s about to melt with terror for not having the information Patrick wanted. Patrick doesn’t want to give him a chance to not know something else. “Okay, thanks,” Patrick says, and the guy scurries out.

It would probably be smart to wait until Gareth is done with his meetings and sends someone for him. But it’s been hours already, and there’s a coronation tonight. Presumably there’s something Patrick should be doing for it.

He changes back into his shirt and hose and straps on one of his more ornamental swords and looks at himself in the glass over his washbasin. Nothing that’s going to disgrace the king by association. He goes over to the door to the anteroom and opens it.

The two guards in there startle and turn around. One of them has his sword halfway out of its sheath before he’s even finished turning. Patrick’s hand goes to his sword hilt automatically—but then he raises his hands in a deescalation gesture. “Whoa, hey,” he says. “Just me.”

“Your highness,” they say in unison, sinking to their knees. The grabby one lets his sword slide back into its sheath.

“As you were,” Patrick says, and they rise to their feet. He’s a little surprised to see them here. They had guardrooms outside their bedrooms in Kane Castle, but they almost never had guards in them; there were guards at the entrance to the family wing, and that was enough security in a castle with two-foot-thick walls and arrow slits for windows. The walls here aren’t any less thick or the windows any wider, but he guesses the customs are different.

“I’m Prince Consort Patrick,” Patrick says—not that he needs any introduction, but it seems polite. They’ve probably never actually seen him before.

“Captain Jonathan Toews,” says the only who grabbed at his sword. “Your highness.”

“Guardsman Brent Seabrook,” says the other one, the one with the slightly less…intensely dire expression on his face. Patrick decides he’s probably the friendly one.

“Thank you for your attention to your duty,” Patrick says, because the guards at home always liked to be thanked. Or, not at home, anymore. At Kane Castle. “If you’ll excuse me…”

He moves past them and goes to the door, and when he looks back he sees that they’ve turned and fallen in behind him. “Hang on,” he says. “Are you coming with me?”

The intense one—Toews—makes a face like it’s a stupid question. “Of course we are.”

Patrick’s heart sinks, and he remembers that they were here in the first place, just outside his door like that’s a necessary place for them to be. “That’s standard practice here, isn’t it.”

It’s not really a question. He’s seen enough to guess that it is. But Toews answers anyway. “It’s our duty to guard you at all times.”

“I can take care of myself inside the palace,” Patrick says, even though he has a feeling from Toews’ tone that he’s one of those stickler types and isn’t going to like this idea. “If I plan to leave, I’ll let you know, and you can accompany me then.”

“We’ll accompany you now,” Toews says.

Yeah. Definitely a stickler. “Look, I appreciate it, but I hardly think I’m about to be attacked while I’m still in the—”

“Are you an idiot,” Toews asks, “or did you parents neglect your education?”

Patrick startles, and the other guard’s eyes go wide. “Excuse me?” Patrick says.

“If you can’t think of one person who would want to kill you without you even leaving the palace—”

“ _Jonny,_ ” the other guard says, and Toews stops talking and presses his lips together.

“Your highness,” he adds grudgingly.

This is a pretty far cry from the footman who looked like he was about to wet himself when he couldn’t answer Patrick’s question. Patrick’s not sure anyone’s ever spoken to him quite like this. “Are you new, or just really bad at this?” he asks, honestly curious.

Toews presses his lips together a little harder. “Your highness,” he begins again, this time with some attempt at politeness, “I’m afraid I can’t allow you to leave your rooms without an escort.”

Patrick looks him in the eye. Toews looks back steadily, not giving an inch. He’s not a coward, that much Patrick can say for him. Patrick could probably have him thrown out of the guard if he wanted to, and he doesn’t even look worried. “Fine,” Patrick says. “One of you can come.”

He’s hoping it’ll be Seabrook, but of course there’s no leaving Toews behind. He falls into step behind Patrick when he leaves the room, precisely six inches behind Patrick’s shoulder and six inches to the right. Patrick’s tempted to take a ruler to it.

It means Patrick has to pretend to know where he’s going. He knows he shouldn’t be embarrassed about not knowing where he’s going in front of Toews—Patrick just got to the castle last night, and anyway, he has some serious doubts about Toews’ judgment after that speech he just made—but he kind of is anyway.

He heads vaguely in the direction he and Gareth came from last night. It seems to be the right way to go; Patrick’s not hitting dead ends, anyway. He makes it maybe three corridors before irritation gets the best of him and he says, “The ambassador from the Isles.”

“Sire?” Toews says.

“That’s who might want to kill me right now.” Rangeland and the Isles have been enemies for years, ever since the death of Gareth’s first wife, the daughter of the Islander king. The return of the Islander ambassador to the Rangeland court was one of the things that motivated Patrick’s parents to try to form an alliance before the other two could ally against them. But it follows that the Islanders won’t be any more pleased than the Kanish would have been if it had gone the other way.

“I guess you didn’t ignore all your statecraft instructors,” Toews grumbles.

Patrick’s surprised into a laugh. “Of course not. I was born to rule.” There’s only a little pinch when Patrick says it. Maybe he shouldn’t be saying that kind of thing to the Rangers—but whatever, it’s a matter of public record. Everyone knows Patrick was the heir to Kanedom before his marriage to Gareth.

“So what’s your excuse?” Patrick asks.

“Excuse me?”

“For knowing about statecraft,” Patrick says. “You’re a guard; aren’t you pretty much supposed to go where you’re pointed?”

“I’m a guard captain,” Toews says, sounding offended. “Sometimes I have to do the pointing.”

Patrick has a response to that on his tongue—but he swallows it. He knows when it’s his own frustration making him want to lash out. _Never speak badly to anyone weaker than you are,_ his dad used to say, and he would follow it up by pointing out that almost everyone Patrick met would be weaker than him. Patrick always said that was unfair, because he obviously wasn’t supposed to insult the people more powerful than him, either, and life seemed pretty boring when you couldn’t mouth off to _anyone_. But he gets the point, especially when the power differential is huge. “Sure, makes sense,” he says. And then, because he can’t resist: “So what’s your excuse for being rude to royalty?”

Toews is silent for a moment behind him. Then, “I beg your pardon, your highness,” he says stiffly. “I’ll endeavor to be more respectful in the future.”

“Yeah, right,” Patrick says, smirking, and when he glances back, Toews is glaring at him before visibly realizing he just proved Patrick’s point. “Relax, I’m not going to have you executed.”

“Very gracious of you,” Toews mutters.

Patrick doesn’t say it—he doesn’t want to give Toews the win—but this conversation is actually making him more comfortable than anything else that’s happened today. Toews might be terrible, but at least Patrick can _talk_ to him.

“I gotta say, though,” he says, wanting to stretch out this mood. “Questioning your monarch’s judgment about his own safety? That seems pretty rude. I’m not sure you should be—”

“Sure I should be.” Toews doesn’t match Patrick’s teasing tone. “It’s my job as captain of your guard to question your judgment when you’re about to make a poor safety decision.”

“Really,” Patrick says, drawing the word out, even though he can feel the mood slipping away from them.

“Yes,” Toews says. “For example, I should probably question your judgment if it looks like you’re wandering through the castle without any idea where you’re going and are about to end up in the royal pig pens.”

Patrick stops walking. “You’re kidding.”

“Why would I kid about something like that?” Toews says blandly.

There’s something about his voice that makes Patrick look at him more closely. “You’re making fun of me,” he says, realizing.

Toews looks straight at him, deadpan. “I’m sure I would never do that to my monarch.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Patrick says, but he’s laughing a little in relief. “You should be required to have, like, a different tone of voice when you do that. That’s just unfair.”

“So did you want to go to the pig pens?” Toews asks.

Patrick’s pretty sure that’s not where they are. Almost entirely sure. But—there is a suspicious aroma in the air. “I was trying to go to the council chambers,” he says.

“Well, you’re in completely the wrong place for that,” Toews says. “Why didn’t you just ask?”

It’s a pretty reasonable point, but Patrick isn’t sure Toews needs to look quite that smug while he makes it. He’s definitely going to figure out how to bring Seabrook with him tomorrow.

It turns out to be not far to the council chambers, even though Patrick’s not quite sure how they get there. It always takes forever to find his way in a building this convoluted; when he was seven they went on a full-family diplomatic mission to the Wild country and he and Erica managed to get desperately lost in a room that was literally next to theirs.

There are some other guards outside the door to the council chamber, and they do some kind of fancy nod-thing with Toews. Patrick hesitates before the door; he’s not sure if he’s allowed to just walk in or what. He would never have just walked into his parents’ council chamber. But he guesses he is co-ruler here, even if he hasn’t been officially crowned yet. Anyway, the guards aren’t stopping him, so he pushes the door open, Toews still at his heels.

There’s an antechamber on the other side, which explains why no one stopped him at the door. There’s some kind of official standing by the inner door, a secretary type, and Patrick sees him do a really quick assessment of Patrick’s clothing and appearance and the guard behind him before dropping to one knee. “Your highness,” he says.

“As you were,” Patrick says automatically. Then, “I’d like to see King Gareth.”

“Oh—yes,” the secretary says, though he doesn’t look certain the answer _is_ yes. “Er—I’ll just go see about that, your highness.”

Patrick stands in the antechamber and reminds himself there’s no reason to feel nervous. He’s just asking to see his husband. Hell, there’s a good argument that he should have been in the council chamber already—though he guesses he should probably be officially crowned before that happens. But still. He’s not a kid butting in where he’s not wanted. He’s co-ruling this country.

The secretary comes out with Gareth after a few minutes, and the look on Gareth’s face is a huge relief: there’s that smile that made Patrick think, _Well, if I have to marry someone, at least it’s someone who likes me._

“Patrick. What’s wrong?” Gareth says.

“Sorry to bother you,” Patrick says. Gareth has a hand on his arm, which is reassuring after the way he turned Patrick away last night. “I just, you know, I wasn’t sure what I should be doing today, with the coronation tonight.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Gareth says. “I’ll send a minister of protocol to work with you right away.”

“Okay. Great,” Patrick says.

“Are your rooms all right?” Gareth asks.

“Yeah, sure,” Patrick says. He doesn’t really care about his rooms. “How about—I understand if you don’t want me in the council yet, but is there anything I should be—”

“Probably best to wait until after the coronation,” Gareth says. “The minister of protocol will be at your chambers within the hour.”

“Sure,” Patrick says, and then Gareth’s pressing a kiss to Patrick’s cheek and going back into the council chamber.

Patrick stands there for a moment before leaving. That was—it wasn’t weird, exactly. There’s nothing he can point to as being weird about it. But somehow it wasn’t quite—

“Was there anything else I can do?” the secretary asks anxiously, and Patrick shakes his head quickly.

“No. Thank you,” he says, and turns to go back to his rooms.

***

Toews is quiet for most of the walk back, except for when he tells Patrick how lost he’s getting. “Do you have _any_ sense of direction?” he finally bursts out with when Patrick tries to turn down a corridor in the opposite direction of his chambers.

“Hey. I’m fine,” Patrick says, even though, no, he really doesn’t have a good sense of direction. It was different in Kane Castle. There wasn’t a single inch he didn’t know like the inside of his own eyelids.

“Sure,” Toews says, very skeptically, and Patrick should definitely have insisted on bringing Seabrook.

The coronation that night is a blur. Patrick holds the scepter in the correct hand and says the words that will make him prince consort and not, like, accidentally the minister of the exchequer or something, and then he meets a lot of nobles and manages to say the right thing to at least most of them. Dverny, the ambassador from Kanedom, looks pleased with him, anyway. He’s making Patrick kind of nervous, hovering around like Patrick’s about to gravely insult someone’s ancestors and get himself kicked out of the kingdom, but Patrick appreciates the support.

And hey, maybe he has reason to be nervous: the ambassador from the Isles is this tall guy with a shifty glance who keeps trying to get close to Patrick in a way that Patrick does not appreciate. Patrick doesn’t think he’d actually try anything here in the Great Hall, with all of Rangeland’s nobles around and guards on all sides of Patrick, but there’s something in his eyes that Patrick would rather avoid.

Patrick gets swept up by Gareth soon enough anyway, as the orchestra plays a waltz and the two of them open the dancing. Their first dance as the married rulers of Rangeland.

It’s all just a few degrees off from what Patrick is used to. He grew up expecting to take an oath like this in his kingdom, with slightly different words, administered by old Scotty, the archbishop who presided over his parents’ marriage and his and his sisters’ christenings. He’s used to talking with the nobles of Kanedom, the ones who already know him and whose lineages he can recite going back five generations. He can waltz as easily as breathing, but he was taught to lead, not to follow.

But Gareth is easy to follow, and there’s a smile on his face when he turns it toward Patrick. So Patrick must be doing okay.

He ends up dancing until well after midnight. He has to dance with everyone—and by that, he really means everyone: most of the nobles can’t seem to decide whether he should dance with the husbands or the wives, so he ends up dancing with both. That’s kind of relief, actually: there have never been two men on the throne of Rangeland before, and Patrick was worried it would be weirder than it is. He knows the ability to bear children is even rarer in men here than in Kanedom. He doubts Gareth would have married him if Erica hadn’t been a full year from coming of age. He definitely gets the sense that some of the nobles are a little weirded out, but most of them seem okay, and they’re eager enough to dance with him that he doesn’t get a moment to sit down all night.

Patrick’s falling asleep on his feet by the time he stumbles down the corridor next to Gareth. He’s not drunk, at least: he made sure not to drink too much, both because he didn’t want to make any horrible mistakes in front of the Ranger nobles, and because he knows what’s coming next.

It might not be any better to do it tonight than last night. But Patrick knows better than to think that Gareth will delay any more. It’s too risky, leaving the marriage unconsummated. If anyone found out, they could challenge Patrick’s right to the throne. And sure, Patrick’s tired, but Gareth seems okay, and Patrick’s pretty sure Gareth will have to do most of the work. And at least tonight he’s too tired to be nervous about it.

Mostly.

He reminds himself that he’s had hands on him all night, dozens of people dancing with him. This isn’t all that different.

He’s on the alert as they approach the neighboring doors of their chambers. Sure enough, Gareth leads them both into his own suite, and dismisses the servants after they’re partially undressed. Patrick’s long row of tiny buttons is undone, his tunic resting on his shoulders but not fastened, and he could take it off, but he hesitates. Maybe Gareth will want to do that.

Gareth catches Patrick looking at him. “You must be tired,” he says.

Patrick makes a noncommittal noise. He is tired, but he doesn’t want it to sound like he’s too tired for this. He gets how this works.

“You should give it a few minutes, but then I’m sure the servants will have made your bed ready for you,” Gareth says.

Patrick’s silent for a minute, making sure that he’s understanding this correctly. It seems like Gareth is putting things off out of concern for Patrick, and Patrick can’t really grudge him that. He definitely would prefer waiting until his whole body wasn’t aching from exhaustion.

“Yeah, okay. Thanks,” he says, and watches as Gareth methodically removes his gloves and outer layers. It doesn’t exactly fill Patrick with a desire to go over and ravish him or anything. Still, it feels kind of weird that Gareth isn’t looking at him, isn’t trying to touch at all—

He’s overthinking. He waits a few minutes, and then he slips next door into his own bedroom.

It feels amazingly good to lie down and not move anymore after being on his feet for so long. Patrick curls up on his side, and if he misses the option to sneak into bed with his sisters, have warm bodies next to his, he falls asleep too quickly to dwell on it.

***

Patrick wakes up the next morning with the sun on his face and panic in his gut that he’s missed the start of arms practice. Then he remembers where he is.

His muscles are all stiff as he climbs out of bed. This is the kind of morning when he always resents having to go out and train—his father never lets him off, no matter how exhausted he is, because what if one day he has to lead a battle in that condition?—but he always, always feels better once he starts. His muscles are hungry for it now, for the stretch and good clean work of lifting a sword. His mind is fuzzy and needs to be cleared by the split-second quickness of a fight.

He does the stretches he’d normally do before practice, which helps some. His limbs are feeling looser once breakfast comes. He doesn’t bother asking the servant who delivers it where he can find the king; he’s not interested in being looked at like he might order them to the dungeon. He eats and changes into something appropriate, the new gold circlet a strange weight on his head, and goes out to his guard chamber.

Toews is there again, along with an unfamiliar guard who’s a couple of inches shorter than Seabrook and who turns out to be named Duncan. “You guys know where I might track down the king?” Patrick asks.

If they think it’s a weird question, they don’t let on. “I’ll take you,” Toews says right away.

Patrick doesn’t really want to deal with him this morning. “How about you?” he says to Duncan.

He doesn’t expect Toews to object, but that shows how clearly he’s thinking this morning. “But,” Toews says, the sound popping out of him, like it’s involuntary. Patrick turns from Duncan’s surprised face to look at him. “But I’m the captain,” Toews says, sounding honestly baffled.

It’s—kind of hilarious, actually. He just looks so earnestly confused, like how could Patrick even imagine having some other guard show him around the castle when Toews is there?

Patrick shoots a glance at Duncan, who looks like he’s fighting down a smirk. “Yeah, okay,” Patrick says to Toews, because who is he to stand in the face of such earnestness?

At least Toews doesn’t poke fun at Patrick’s sense of direction this time. He leads Patrick roughly in the direction of the council chamber again—ha, Patrick _does_ know what direction things are in, take that, Toews—but he turns at the last minute. “We aren’t going to the council?” Patrick asks.

“They aren’t meeting today,” Toews says, like this is a thing everyone knows. “The king should be in his offices.”

The king is in his offices, it turns out, and meeting with people, but Patrick gets shown in right away. Gareth is all smiles when he enters. “Did you sleep well?” he asks, reaching out for Patrick’s hand.

“Yeah, great,” Patrick says, which is true, though, he’s not sure it comes out that way. There are a few nobles in the room, and a bunch of secretaries, and Toews, and Patrick isn’t used to people just holding his hand in public.

“Sorry I don’t have more time to spend you today,” Gareth says. “My secretaries were able to push appointments back for my absence in Kanedom, but it means all the most important ones were scheduled for today. Forgive me?”

“Uh, yeah, of course,” Patrick says. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Not today, I think,” Gareth says. “But I appreciate the offer.”

Patrick wants to ask if he can stay and watch, even if he can’t help. That seems like it might be overreaching, though, and he really doesn’t want to put Gareth in the position of having to shoot him down in front of all these people. He doesn’t remember who the nobles are, but they’re probably important.

He must hesitate just long enough, though, because Gareth says, “I might suggest you investigate the central courtyard, if you’re in want of occupation this morning.”

“Sure,” Patrick says in relief. “Great. Thanks.” He can’t imagine what he’d do if he had to go back to his room with nothing to keep him busy all day.

He’s about to leave when he remembers half the reason he came here. “At h—I mean, in Kanedom,” he says, pulling Gareth aside a little so the whole group of nobles won’t hear his request. “I used to train with the guards. Would it be all right for me to do that here?”

Gareth looks pleased. “That’s a good idea. I’ll check with General Quinn to see how he’d like to involve you.”

It’s a nice hopeful note to leave the office on. Patrick is feeling much better about things as Toews guides him to the central courtyard (mostly by means of pointed throat-clearing when Patrick’s about to go in the wrong direction). But then he gets there and—

“What the fuck,” Patrick says, looking at the courtyard. “It’s a garden?”

“What did you think it was?” Toews asks.

“I don’t know. Gareth said—” But Patrick replays Gareth’s words and realizes he didn’t actually say there would be something for Patrick to do in the central courtyard. He just said he could check it out if he didn’t have anything else to do.

It is a really nice garden. Patrick could see him and his sisters having a great time here, especially when were younger—there are lots of little winding pathways and bushes that look like you could crawl into them and play games. But his sisters aren’t here, and anyway it’s probably beneath the dignity of a prince consort to crawl into hydrangea bushes.

“Sometimes there are people here, when it’s sunny,” Toews offers.

It’s cloudy right now. It’s still not actually bad out, not too hot, and it would be kind of nice to sit at some of the little tables along the winding paths. But Patrick doesn’t want to sit. He wants to _do_ something.

“There’s also a library off the northwest corner,” Toews says.

Patrick makes a face without meaning to. He doesn’t hate reading, but it’s never been what he’s wanted to spend most of his time doing. Especially right now when he’s already feeling like he’s going to go stir-crazy.

“Also,” Toews says, “I think there’s a sewing room on the second—”

“Are you serious,” Patrick says, and Toews’ face does the little twitch thing that Patrick’s starting to recognize as him fighting against a smile. Bastard.

Patrick kicks at a cobblestone a little bit. He’d like to go riding, get out in to the open air, but he doesn’t have a horse here and he doesn’t know the countryside. It doesn’t feel like he should just go charging off and do that without talking to Gareth first. He could get a book to read, go back to his room, or—he doesn’t even know. He feels like the walls of the couryard are really close around him.

“I could give you a tour of the castle,” Toews says after a minute.

“Yeah, what the hell,” Patrick says.

***

Toews turns out to be a terrible tour guide. Not because he doesn’t know stuff about the castle—he actually does, even a bunch of history stuff that Patrick wouldn’t have expected a guard captain to know—but because he is evil.

Patrick should have seen this coming. “So when we came into this room we were coming from that direction,” Toews says, pointing really obviously when they exit the music room (didn’t do much for Patrick, but Jessica would have loved it). “Which means that if we want to keep going, we should go in that—”

“Jesus, I know,” Patrick says. He really did know that one. He’s known all of them so far. Well, almost.

“Just wanted to make sure,” Toews says, and really, he is the least respectful guard Patrick has ever met.

They do end up in the library eventually, since it’s part of the tour, and Patrick decides to take some precautions against the fact that he’s obviously going to have some time to kill here.

“Seriously?” Toews says when he emerges with his little stack of books.

“What? I’m allowed to borrow them, right?” Patrick says

“Of course, you’re the Prince Consort,” Toews says. “You can borrow whatever. But the Wyvern Chronicles? Seriously?”

“Hey, those books are good,” Patrick says. “My sisters and I read the first two last year. They’re going to be so jealous when they hear there’s a third.”

Toews gives him the judgiest look Patrick’s ever seen. “Those books are trash.”

“The girl falls in love with a wyvern and has to abandon her kingdom to save his species,” Patrick says. “That’s, like, timeless.” Then, when Toews rolls his eyes, “Okay, so what do you like to read that’s so good?”

Toews regards him for a moment, then finds another volume to put on top of Patrick’s pile.

“ _The Unsinkable Ship of State_ ,” Patrick reads. He leafs through it a little. “Yup, this looks intolerable.”

“It’s good,” Toews says stubbornly, and Patrick rolls his eyes but doesn’t put it back. That would be like admitting defeat.

Toews is quiet on the way back—doesn’t even comment when Patrick makes his one wrong turn (he is _learning,_ thank you very much)—and finally Patrick says, “What’s up? We’re not about to be attacked by secret castle bandits or anything, are we?”

Toews has his head cocked. “Just, this tour.”

“What about it?”

“I shouldn’t have had to give it to you,” Toews says.

The spike of hurt is unexpected. It’s not like it was Patrick’s first choice to have Toews give him a tour of the castle today, either, but he thought they were having kind of an okay time. “Well, sorry if it’s not exactly in your job description, but—”

“No, not that,” Toews says. “Just, someone else should have done it. When you arrived. They shouldn’t have left you with no idea how to get around.”

“Oh.” That’s…a decent point, actually. “I think it’s tough for Gareth returning from such a long trip away. He’s been slammed with meetings since we got back.”

“Yeah, but you’d think he could have been better organized,” Toews says, like Gareth has personally offended him by not looking out for Patrick’s every need.

It makes Patrick uncomfortable, for some reason. “It’s not a big deal. He doesn’t want to overwhelm me.”

“Yeah, but—” Toews says, and then seems to think better of it. “Sorry, your highness,” he says.

“No, it’s—it’s fine,” Patrick says. He’s not sure why it weirds him out so much, the way Toews says _your highness._ Patrick’s been addressed that way his whole life. But when Toews does it, it’s like he’s imposing a distance that wasn’t there before. Closing himself off.

He’s a freaking guard; Patrick doesn’t care. But he’s also the person Patrick’s talked to the most over the two days he’s been in this country, and maybe Toews has a point about Gareth needing to be better organized.

They go back to Patrick’s rooms in silence, and when they get there Duncan looks relieved to see him. “Your highness. We were trying to find you,” he says. “There’s a tailor in there who says Gareth sent him to make you new formal wear. He’s pretty stressed about you not being there yet.”

Patrick shoots a triumphant look at Jonny—see, Gareth is thinking about the things he’ll need. Toews looks pointed, as if to say, _about time._ and Patrick rolls his eyes and goes in to be fitted.

***

The next few days are pretty similar to the first two. Gareth is still really busy with his backlog of meetings, so Patrick reads his books—sometimes in the central courtyard—and writes to his family a couple more times. He tells them about the castle tour, and details the plot of the third Wyvern Chronicles book for his sisters. He doesn’t mention that it was his guard who gave him the tour, or that he’s been reading so much because he doesn’t have anything to do.

Then before dinner each night, someone comes to dress him, and he goes to dinner with the court and tries to remember everyone’s names and not say anything that will start an international incident.

Dinner is usually a small affair, but small in Range Castle still means a few dozen courtiers. The courtiers are nice enough but don’t go out of their way to get to know Patrick. He wonders if maybe the onus is on him to do that, as the higher-ranking one, and he makes a note to ask Gareth about it the next time they’re alone. Which isn’t very often—Gareth is attentive at the dinners, but he always sends Patrick back to his own rooms at the end of the evening.

After the third night Patrick stops even being nervous about it. It seems obvious that Gareth’s not going to ask Patrick into his bed anytime soon, and Patrick figures Gareth will let him know if that changes. Patrick feels like maybe he should ask about it—it’s weird, if nothing else. But again, it’s hard to have a private conversation with Gareth when they never see each other except at a crowded dinner table.

Also, he’s not sure he wants things to change. He has a feeling like he’s gotten away with something, by getting married and not having to sleep with his husband. It’s easier not to think about it.

He does ask about training with the guards. Gareth is apologetic: he hasn’t had a chance to talk with the general who oversees the palace guards. There’s some trouble in the northwestern reaches of the kingdom, and the general’s been called away. No, it probably wouldn’t make sense for Patrick to start drilling with them on a casual basis without the general’s approval; the guards have a very strict training regime, and Gareth wouldn’t want to disrespect him by introducing someone who had been trained in another kingdom’s fighting styles.

Patrick understands the delicate dance involved in keeping one’s senior officials happy. But also he feels like if he doesn’t get any real practice in sometime soon he’s going to go crazy. He’s been trying to keep his sword muscles in shape in his rooms, but it’s just not the same. There’s not enough space, and he can’t push himself when he’s alone like this. He doesn’t know which directions to push.

It’s a week before he decides to take matters in his own hands. He’s in his room one morning practicing a feint, trying to make it subtle enough that no opponent would pick up on it. He’s trying to imagine what Savard would have to say about it, the way he’d shout critiques of Patrick’s form, and the way Erica would would stand across from him, eyes darting around easily to take in every detail of his stance, trying to see through what he has planned. It hits him suddenly that he’ll never train with either of them again, and he lets his sword point drop to the ground.

He stands still while that all rolls through him, and then he opens his inner door. It’s Toews and Seabs—Seabrook—again today, and they snap to attention.

“Hey,” Patrick says. “One of you get in here and practice this with me.”

Seabs’ eyes go wide a little bit. It occurs to Patrick belatedly that he might be asking something unfair of them, asking them to face off against the person they’re supposed to be protecting. But Toews steps forward right away.

Patrick doesn’t have high hopes. Even a mediocre swordsman would be better than open air—but he has no reason to believe either of these guys is even mediocre. Kane Castle had plenty of guards who could hack away in a battle but couldn’t handle a real duel one-on-one for more than ten or fifteen seconds.

The way Toews falls into a stance makes Patrick think he’ll last at least more than fifteen seconds. But they barely have time to lift their swords before Toews is falling out of his stance again and shaking his head. “We can’t do this,” he says. “There’s no space in here.”

Patrick swallows down a burst of frustration. “Well, what do you want me to do, then?” he says, aware that he’s whining and unable to keep himself from doing it. If he were at Kane Castle, he’d have his pick of guards to fight in the open air, but—

Toews is giving him a weird look. “Find somewhere else to fight, obviously,” he says. “Come on, there’s a dancing room on the second floor that never gets used during the day.”

Patrick’s so relieved he doesn’t even say anything as Toews herds him out the door, or when he gets Seabs to follow them. “I can’t guard you if I’m fighting you,” Toews says, which Patrick has to admit is fair.

The dancing room is empty of everything but the sconces on the walls. Patrick’s eye immediately checks for flaws in the wood floor, but it’s smooth and polished to a shine. He couldn’t have asked for a better space.

Seabs takes up a position near the door. Patrick starts doing some of the stretches he’d normally do before a fight. He already stretched in his rooms, but it’s always good to center himself in a new space. Plus, he wants to give Toews time to warm up. He has to remind himself not to get his hopes up—chances are this fight won’t last more than a minute. But maybe Toews has had some training. Maybe Patrick can go easy on him, stretch things out.

They square off, and Seabs counts down, as if this were a real duel and he were master of the lists. Then Patrick raises his sword, ready to start slow—and Toews comes at him with such a flurry of blows that he has to dance backwards to keep him from scoring a hit.

“What the fuck!” Patrick says when he’s finally bought himself some space with a well-timed parry.

Toews gives him a dark-eyed look. “What, did you not want me to fight you?”

“Sure, but no one said you were—” Patrick swallows the _good._ because he has a feeling Toews will find that kind of insulting. Patrick wouldn’t even mean it that way: it’s just that there are very few people Patrick’s met over the years who could actually pose a challenge to him. The degree of training Patrick’s done isn’t necessary for guards, or soldiers, or even for Patrick, really—it was just that he loved it, and his parents saw that, and that’s how Savvy became part of the palace staff.

He wonders who the hell taught Toews. No way did he become this good doing drill with the guards.

“Okay, let’s go again,” he says.

“I don’t know, are you sure you want to?” Toews says. He’s looking smug, and he has a gleam in his eye that says he thinks he’s being clever. “Because that seemed kind of tough for you, so…”

“Shut up and get your sword back up,” Patrick says.

This time he goes on the attack first, and he pushes Toews hard enough that he can tell Toews is struggling to fend him off. At first it’s viciously satisfying to know he’s wiping the smugness off Toews’ face, and then he gets into the rhythm of the thing and it’s just satisfying to be fighting. Toews isn’t as good as Patrick thought from that initial rush—he’s better. Good enough that Patrick has to put every single thought in his brain and every part of his body into fighting him. At one point his foot slips and he almost loses it, but he manages a wild swing that diverts Toews’ blade just enough and lets him go on the attack again.

It gets faster as they get to know each other’s styles. Toews is all power, driving forward every chance he can get, but he’s vulnerable to Patrick’s subtleties. Not vulnerable enough for Patrick to easily win—but Patrick doesn’t care. This is the most fun he’s had all week. This is the most fun he’s had in _years_ , fighting someone where neither of them has to hold back, where each of them is putting their entire selves into this dance for dominance. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been holding back with Erica until he doesn’t have to anymore.

In the end, it’s Patrick who breaks through: Toews’ grip shifts just right for Patrick to twist the sword out of his hand in a move Savvy taught him, sending Toews’ blade skittering across the polished wood floor. Patrick levels his sword at Toews’ neck. “Do you yield?” Patrick asks.

Toews is staring at him, chest heaving. Patrick’s sword tip is a half-inch from his skin, totally steady. “Holy shit,” Seabs says quietly, but Patrick doesn’t look at him. He’s waiting for Toews’ answer.

Finally Toews says, in a low voice, “Yes. I yield.”

Something swoops through Patrick’s stomach, fierce gladness. He wants—he wants to go again. He wants to fight Toews for hours. They’re both a mess, sweat soaking through layers of clothing, but Patrick doesn’t want to stop.

“I don’t think think I’ve ever seen someone beat Jonny like that,” Seabs says, and it calls Patrick back to himself enough for him to lower his sword. He turns away, rolls his shoulders, shakes out his tired muscles. He can see Toews doing the same thing out of the corner of his eye.

“Yeah?” Patrick says. “First time for you, huh?” he says to Toews.

“I’ve lost before,” Toews says shortly.

Seabs snorts. “When, when you were eight?”

Toews is silent for a moment. “I was nine,” he says.

Patrick snorts a laugh. It takes a moment, but he can see Toews’ mouth twitch.

It’s impossible that Toews didn’t feel that fight the way he did. Patrick knows some people don’t find anything particularly thrilling in sword-fighting—but those people don’t fight the way Toews did. There’s no way he missed out on how ridiculously great that was.

“We have to do that again,” Patrick says.

“Well, obviously,” Toews says impatiently, and Patrick grins.

“Yeah, with some practice, you might get as good as my last sparring partner,” he says.

Toews frowns. “Who was your last sparring partner?”

“My little sister,” Patrick says, and watches Toews’ eyes go wide.

“Your little—”

“Hey, she was really good!” Patrick says while Toews dives at him. Patrick squirms away, but Toews get him by the arm and shakes his sweaty hair onto him and—

“Jonny!” Seabs shouts, and Toews freezes and then straightens up really fast with this kind of hilarious look of horror on his face.

“Sorry, your highness—I forgot—”

“Whatever,” Patrick says. What he really wants to do is tell him not to stop. He wants Toews to wrestle with him, like his sisters and the guards he was closest to back in Kanedom. He wants Toews not to retreat into formality. “It’s no big deal,” he says, but Toews is already sinking to his knees.

“I apologize,” he says, bowing formally, and Patrick appreciates a good apology as much as the next person, but Toews has _nothing to apologize for._

“You can apologize for the pitiful fight you put up just now,” Patrick says. “Like, what was that? You said you’d fought before, right?”

That does it: Toews’ face ignites with indignation, and he scrambles to his feet. “Okay, that’s it. We are doing that again tomorrow.”

Patrick beams.

“Yeah, sure, you guys can fight tomorrow,” Seabs says. “But you’re using practice swords next time. Jesus Christ.”

***

They fall into a new routine that’s infinitely better than Patrick’s old one. Patrick gets up early—it just doesn’t feel right to sleep in past sunrise—and he and Toews and Seabs troop over to the deserted dancing room for some sparring. They mix it up sometimes, find other spots to practice, but Patrick’s always a little worried about getting caught in other places. Not that he’s doing anything wrong—but he somehow doesn’t feel like Gareth would be thrilled if he found out. He doesn’t even know why he thinks that.

After the sparring, Patrick goes back for a bath (he always needs it), and then sometimes he stays in his rooms but usually he doesn’t. It’s just so _quiet_ in his rooms. The walls of the castle are thick enough that he can’t really hear anything, and he doesn’t have any excuse to have his guards with him inside his own bedroom. He ends up feeling like he’s the only person alive in the world. So he goes and wanders the castle, with Toews at his heels.

The second day of sparring, when they’re out in the castle afterward, Toews tells Patrick to call him Jonny. “This is because you found out I’m good at fighting, isn’t it?” Patrick says.

“No,” Jonny says, affronted. “It just feels like—no one calls me Toews, they call me Tazer, or Taze, or—”

“Relax, I’ll do it,” Patrick says. He was obviously going to do it. He just likes giving Toews a hard time—Jonny. He likes giving Jonny a hard time. “You can call me Patrick.”

Jonny gives him a look. “I already do.”

“But don’t you call me ‘your highness’?” Patrick says, because Jonny doesn’t. He almost never remembers to.

“Whatever, _Patrick,_ ” Jonny says, and Patrick grins, knowing Jonny can’t see it, from his position behind Patrick’s shoulder. Not really caring if he does see it.

They’re pretty evenly matched with a broadsword. Patrick wins more often than Jonny does, but not by a lot; he has a little more of an edge when they switch to rapier, but neither of them is quite as strong at that. Savvy was the one who insisted Patrick couldn’t be good with just one weapon. “What if you don’t have a broadsword?” he used to say, to which Patrick would posit, what if he didn’t have a rapier, either? But Savvy was in charge, so.

It’s not totally comfortable wandering the castle. It reminds Patrick how much he still doesn’t understand his role here, how to even begin stepping into it. Whenever he brings it up with Gareth, Gareth tells him to take his time, not rush things, finish settling in, and Patrick appreciates the consideration, but he doesn’t feel like there’s anything to settle. He could use some chaos, actually. It would beat walking around the castle and feeling like all the servants who drop into bows as he passes know that he doesn’t have anywhere to go.

He and Jonny end up spending a lot of time at the top of the old watchtower—there are places near but not quite at the top that were maybe supposed to be rooms at one point, and maybe supposed to be walled up at another point, and now they’re spaces you can slip into through chinks in the stone and look out at what feels like the whole kingdom. There’s one Patrick loves that’s big enough to be his bedroom, and where the exterior wall is almost entirely missing. He can look out at the mountains to the west that, if you cross over them, will lead you back to Kanedom. He tries not to think about that too much, though; just sits at the edge, legs hanging over, and enjoys the summer sun on his face and the lack of people asking what he’s doing.

He can tell Jonny’s wondering what they’re doing there, the first time Patrick goes up there. He doesn’t ask, because sometimes he’s actually a good guard; and when Patrick brings out the remains of his lunch and lays it out like a picnic and brings out the most recent novel he picked up from the library and starts reading, Jonny deigns to sit with him on the edge after a while.

“You’re going to fall off and die, you know,” Jonny says.

“Well, whose fault would that be?” Patrick asks, licking extra jam off his fingers. “You’re my guard. Aren’t you supposed to keep me safe?”

“I’ll keep you safe by telling you not to go near two-hundred-foot drops,” Jonny says darkly, but he doesn’t get up, and he doesn’t make Patrick move. And Patrick magnanimously doesn’t drink more than half a glass of wine, so that Jonny doesn’t have to worry.

He starts coming up there a lot. It feels distant from the rest of the castle, the world where Patrick doesn’t fit in yet and keeps being reminded of the connections he once had and doesn’t. Besides, it’s not like he’s alone up here.

At first Patrick reads a lot up there, but Jonny never brings a book of his own—that would probably be dangerous or whatever, reading a book when he’s supposed to be guarding—and it starts to feel kind of mean, reading when Jonny doesn’t have anything to do. So Patrick starts telling Jonny about the plot of the book he’s reading, about a naiad who falls in love with a human boy, and when Jonny starts making disgusted faces about it, Patrick takes it as an invitation to tell him about other books, the ones he read with his sisters back in Kanedom.

It feels weird to talk about his past life aloud. Patrick feels the lack of his family like someone hacked off part of his body. He’s been trying to get himself to think about them less, to give the wound time to heal. But they’re on his mind all the time, thoughts he has to push down, and sometimes, when he’s up in the tower with Jonny, he lets himself say some of those thoughts out loud.

He always feels awkward after he does, like Jonny will be able to tell how much he’s poking at an open wound. But Jonny listens, and sometimes when Patrick gets choked up and has to stop talking, he fills the silence with stories of his own: easy stories about his life with the guards that don’t really demand that Patrick do anything but be quiet while he tells them, and which usually make him laugh by the end. Jonny always looks ridiculously pleased with himself when he makes Patrick laugh. Probably because he’s so bad at humor that no one’s ever laughed at his jokes before. But he usually succeeds at it with Patrick.

They talk about other stuff, too. “Did you read that book I recommended?” Jonny asks him one day.

Patrick makes a noncommittal noise.

“Sorry, what was that?” Jonny says, looking dryly amused.

Patrick makes a face. He doesn’t want to say it, because he knows it’s going to make Jonny insufferably smug, but: “Fine, I read it, okay?” he says. “It was really helpful. Are you happy now?”

“Yes,” Jonny says. He looks every bit as smug as Patrick was afraid he would. “See what happens when you read real books?”

“I had a tutor for fifteen years,” Patrick says. “I have had to read real books before. I mean—unfun books. Whatever.”

Jonny mouths the word _unfun._

“But, like, okay, it was helpful,” Patrick says. “It was really…I mean, the bit about defensive governance?”

“Right?” Jonny says, face lighting up. “It makes so much sense. You have to be guarding against the problems that aren’t there yet as well as the ones that are. And the bit about using two problems to solve each other—”

“Oh yeah, that was genius,” Patrick says. “Hard to implement, though—”

“Not really, if you’re looking at all the possible ways you could improve the kingdom,” Jonny says. “You have so many potential variables to work with.”

“But the bit about ignoring the will of the people when it’s in their best interest,” Patrick says. “The book took that way too far.”

“Did not,” Jonny says, straightening up, and they’re still arguing when it’s time for Patrick to go get ready for dinner. Patrick has a better picture of why Jonny knows so much about statecraft now: he’s obviously a huge nerd.

It’s maybe a couple of weeks after they start the sparring thing that Patrick opens the door to the guard room in the morning and Jonny isn’t there. Jonny’s not there a hundred percent of the time, obviously—he’s not on duty all day and all night, and Patrick has different evening guards, Saader and Harsty and Bicks—but he’s always there in the morning, him and Seabs or him and Duncs. This time it’s a cocky-looking guard Patrick’s seen once or twice before and also a kid who looks like he has to be even younger than Patrick.

“What the fuck?” Patrick says, before he remembers these aren’t his usual guards and maybe he should try to act at least passably like a respectable member of royalty. “Sorry. I mean, where’s Captain Toews?”

“Day off,” the cocky one says. He’s sort of ludicrously good-looking, which Patrick resents. He always figured that was what a prince should look like, and he was a little disappointed that he didn’t. Not that he’s ugly or anything. Just…yeah, this guy’s face is too much. “So you’re the reason the captain’s been skipping out on drill, huh?”

“Jonny’s been skipping out on drill?” Patrick says.

“Like, all the time,” the younger one says. He has an eager-looking face and shaggy hair that seems like it shouldn’t be allowed in the guard, but whatever. The main point is that he isn’t Jonny.

It’s kind of worrisome how unsettled Patrick is by the lack of Jonny. It’s making him realize how much he’s become dependent on Jonny, on this one guard who could be assigned to a different duty at any time. That’s not the kind of network he should be building in this new country.

“He says he has to keep himself well-rested for the prince consort,” the cocky one says with a smirk.

Patrick feels his face fall into sterner lines. “You have a problem with that?”

“No, your highness,” the cocky one says, but he’s still smirking, and Patrick has the distinct feeling he isn’t cowed. Man, did Patrick ever have the ability to intimidate guards, ever?

“Well, I’m going out,” Patrick says. “You’re welcome to come.”

Sharpy (the cocky one) and Shawzy (the shaggy one) wait for him to change out of his training clothes and into something the court can see him in. They both end up coming out with him, which Patrick doesn’t object to; he’s gotten pretty used to being trailed. He only goes out with just Jonny in the afternoons because…well, it’s tradition, is all.

He’s actually not sure where he’s going this morning. He’s okay with the break from sparring—Savvy was big on the occasional rest day—but he also doesn’t want to take these guards to the top of the tower. It would feel weird, somehow. He barely knows these guys. So he sort of wanders until he ends up in the central courtyard.

At least it’s a nice day this time, but he didn’t bring a book, and sitting at one of the little tables without a book is boring. Patrick is starting to feel stupid, like maybe he should just lose face and go back to his rooms, when the Islander ambassador shows up.

“Your highness,” the ambassador says, sweeping a bow. Tavares, is his name; Patrick got a thorough lesson on the guy before leaving Kanedom, most of which was about staying away from him because he’d probably love an excuse to send Kanedom and Rangeland into war against each other. “How are you finding your new kingdom?”

It’s an innocuous enough question, but Patrick doesn’t like the look on the guy’s face: he’s kind of staring at him like he’s envisioning all the ways Patrick could be done in. Patrick sits a little straighter between his two guards, who, he’s noticed, have put their hands on their sword-hilts.

“I feel like I’m at home already,” Patrick says. “Rangeland has always been a strong ally to Kanedom.” It’s a blatant lie—Patrick’s only here because of how close the two countries came to war—but it’s the kind of lie he’s expected to make, as the link between the kingdoms.

“I’m delighted to hear it,” Tavares says, eyes shifting a little closer to murderous. He’s not very good at it, Patrick thinks; Jonny gives him better murderous glares than this four times before breakfast. But he’s always very sure Jonny doesn’t meant them, and now…Tavares edges closer. “I was hoping I could speak to you for a—”

“John!” the Kanedom ambassador says, swooping down on them so that Tavares takes a startled step back. “I was wondering where you’d gotten to. I have the papers you need to look at, in the library, just back here…”

He’s obviously trying to get Tavares away as quickly as possible, tugging at his elbow. Patrick hasn’t had much to do with Dverny in his busy life of trying to find something to do in Rangeland so far; the guy gives him only a swift glance now, and Patrick tries to communicate his gratitude silently. The Islander ambassador is definitely not happy to be led away, but at least he’s not looking menacingly at Patrick anymore.

“Wow. What’s that guy’s problem?” Shawzy asks, and Sharpy laughs.

“Don’t you pay attention to poilitics?” Sharpy asks. “Patrick scooped his opportunity to put an Islander on the throne of Rangeland. You of all people should know how that works.”

“Well, yeah, I do, but…”

“He’s probably just a dick,” Patrick says, trying to suppress the queasiness in his gut. His life has felt pretty chill up to this point, and he doesn’t like the reminder that he’s in—not necessarily a precarious position, but an important one. The prickle of unease from this morning comes back: he should be building more of a network, coming to know his new kingdom. He can’t just be hanging out with his guards. 

He asks Gareth about it at dinner that night, the first time he’s mentioned in in a week or so. “I’ve been here for a while now,” he says, trying not to sound like he’s complaining about anything. “I was just thinking it might be nice to get out of the palace. Unless there’s some reason I shouldn’t—”

“No, not at all,” Gareth says, smiling widely. “In fact, I was just saying to Anders—hey! Anders!” One of the big bearded guys down the table looks up. “Did you still want us for that hunting party next week?”

“It would be a pleasure, your majesty,” the bearded guy says to Gareth, shooting a quick curious glance at Patrick.

“There now,” Gareth says, putting a hand on Patrick’s shoulder and curling his fingers just past the collar of his shirt in a way he tends to do when they’re out in public. “Would you like that?”

Patrick’s never been super into hunting, but the idea of going out into the countryside sounds amazing right now. Riding—it’s been a month since Patrick’s been on a horse. “That sound great,” he says honestly.

“It’s settled, then,” Gareth says, and the nobles around them start talking about what changes to make to the hunting party now that it’s a royal expedition: where the best territory will be; what game they’re going to catch.

It does make for something to look forward to. But it’s not everything he needs—he can’t count on one hunting trip to help him build the connections he needs in this new kingdom of his, so he chats with some of the nobles after dinner as the string quartet plays for them. He ends up talking with a few of the women, who are going on about the new commercial district opening in the capital, and how it should be landscaped. “Well, you know, the riverwalk,” one of them says, and the rest all agree that the riverwalk is too exquisite to be altered, and then they look at Patrick to give his opinion.

Patrick finds himself in that horrible moment that used to come when his tutor would ask him a question about a lesson he was supposed to have read and forgot. His mouth works for a moment, and then he says, “I’m afraid I haven’t actually seen it.”

The ladies are all scandalized. “You have to see it while the flowers are still in bloom,” one of them says. “Then again after the leaves change, of course, but don’t lose any time.”

“Angeline, don’t shame him,” one of the other women says, mouth sliding into something teasing. “Clearly Gareth’s been keeping him too busy.”

There are winks and nudges all around at that. Patrick finds himself blushing, even though he doesn’t have anything to blush about. “I’ll visit it as soon as possible,” he says.

“You must let us know if you need a guide,” one of them starts to say, but then Gareth joins the conversation, his hand possessive on the small of Patrick’s back.

They walk back to their rooms together, like they usually do. “Should I be visiting the nobles?” Patrick asks. He knows it’s something his parents do a lot of; he had his own friends to visit back in Kanedom, but it wasn’t a question of formal duty the way it was for his parents. He wonders if he’s been neglecting his duties here.

But Gareth shakes his head. “Eventually, yes,” he says. “But it will be best if I can go with you for the first visits. I’m trying to clear my schedule to make room, but—”

“It’s okay.” Patrick has to keep reminding himself that he has years here, that he doesn’t need to do everything immediately. “I’m glad we’re going on the hunting trip,” he adds, in case Gareth is thinking about canceling that for the sake of his schedule.

“Of course,” Gareth says, smiling at him with a hand still heavy on the small of his back, before leading him away from the guards and into his rooms, where they’ll wait a few minutes like they always do to give the servants time to clear out before Patrick slips back to his own bed.

His bed is starting to feel like his own after the weeks he’s spent in it now. It’s maybe a little alarming how easy it’s been to get used to Gareth not asking anything of him in this arena. It’s just so easy to go to his own bed and not think about anyone in particular when he puts his hands on himself.

Patrick’s been doing that more and more often lately: stroking himself furtively under the covers when he gets into bed at night. It’s natural—he came here expecting sex as a part of marriage. He doesn’t need to read anything else into it.

***

Jonny’s there in the guardroom when Patrick pokes his head out the next morning. Patrick surprises himself by how widely he smiles at him. He smiles at Seabs too, obviously, but Jonny being back means sparring, means the thrill of working himself as hard as he can against an opponent who pushes him for every drop of skill. His eyes keep drifting back to Jonny’s face, to the way Jonny’s also looking at him, something bright in his eyes. Patrick hopes it’s because he’s glad to be back on duty and not because he’s still happy from being off it.

Patrick doesn’t bring up the other thing on his mind until after they’ve sparred. It’s not pure sparring today: they’ve started taking it slower at the beginning, working through some of the exercises Patrick and Jonny learned in their respective training. They’ve been trained differently enough that Jonny has some exercises that seem dumb to Patrick, but Jonny has such a bad attitude about learning any of Patrick’s exercises that Patrick decides he has to be the bigger person and pretend to be super willing to learn whatever Jonny has to teach him. Otherwise he doesn’t get to give Jonny a hard time about learning from him.

Besides, it turns out most of the dumb-looking exercises have a point once you do them five hundred times or so.

“It’s all about building strength,” Jonny says for maybe the five-hundredth time, when they’re doing some cooling-down exercises.

“It is not all about strength,” Patrick says, rolling his eyes but not bothering to add the many other things it is also about, because he’s said that enough times today already. Also because he does kind of like the idea of getting stronger. If he’s as strong as Jonny _and_ still faster than him…

“Anyway,” he says, strapping his sword back on. “I was thinking we might do something different today. How do you guys feel about a trip outside?”

Jonny and Seabs instantly go to a higher level of alertness. They exchange a look. “Like, outside the castle?” Seabs says.

“Yeah, into the city,” Patrick says. “There’s a lot I haven’t seen yet.”

“I’ll put in an armsman request,” Jonny says right away. “We’ll want a group of at least ten—”

“Whoa, hey,” Patrick says. “I’m not saying I shouldn’t be under guard on the outside,” he says, forestalling the objection he can see building on Jonny’s face. “But I was hoping this trip could be more low-key. Like, maybe just the two of you.”

“But—” Jonny starts to say.

“No one in the capital knows what I look like, right?” Patrick says. “Except the nobles or whatever. So really, if anyone did want to mess with me, I’d be in more danger with ten guards who’d make it obvious who I was, than with the two of you.”

Jonny looks annoyed, like he’s trying to find the flaws in that.

“Kid has a point,” Seabs says.

“Yeah, but if someone tried something, those ten guards would be able to stop them,” Jonny says, finally hitting on the objection.

“You saying you couldn’t stop them?” Patrick asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Obviously we could,” Jonny says. “But if you get attacked by a whole group of—”

“If I get attacked by a whole group of soldiers,” Patrick says, “the first time I leave the castle in a month, without giving anyone a heads up about the fact that I’m going, and despite almost no one knowing what I look like, then I promise I’ll never ignore your advice again.”

Jonny opens his mouth but doesn’t say anything. Seabs laughs.

“Fine,” Jonny says. “We’ll do it your way.”

***

They split up briefly, taking it in turns to change into something less conspicuous. Jonny and Seabs need to keep their leather armor, but they don’t have to be quite so obviously royal guardsmen as they usually are. And Patrick needs to find the plainest thing in his wardrobe.

It’s not that plain, but he’s hoping he just looks like a normal rich person and not the co-ruler of the country. His reason for wanting to be low-key about the whole thing isn’t just security, though that’s part of it. It’s also because while he technically asked Gareth about leaving the castle, and Gareth technically said it was fine…wandering around the city wasn’t quite what they ended up talking about. And yeah, Patrick could wait till tonight and try to get more specific permission, but he kind of just wants to get out of here today.

Plus there’s always the chance that Gareth won’t love the idea even with the ten guards on his heels, and that’s just—yeah. Patrick’s just gonna go. He did technically get permission.

The guards at the east door of the castle don’t break stance when Patrick strolls out with Jonny and Seabs. It’s a weird feeling: he had a lot more freedom inside the castle in Kanedom, but a lot less freedom outside of it. Everyone in the capital knew what he looked like, and most people in the rest of the country; he could never have gone out with only two guards, not in a carriage or anything. But here he’s practically anonymous.

It’s a good feeling, especially after weeks of being trapped inside stone walls. And the city is nicely laid out, a wide avenue leading from the castle to a cobblestone square full of market stalls, and then little winding streets with tidy stone row houses with flowers in the windows boxes.

The river is the best part. Madison-on-Range isn’t on the ocean like Kane City was; there’s nothing that can compare, Patrick’s pretty sure, with the white stone of Kane Harbor and the triple-masters rocking gently at dock with the wide blue ocean behind them. But Range River is a pretty good backup. The riverwalk is as exquisitely landscaped as the ladies at court were saying, lined with flowering beds that would make the Kane Castle gardeners jealous. But it’s the river that’s the real attraction, huge and wide and green, rushing past like it’s in a hurry to get somewhere. Patrick hadn’t realized how much he’d missed _water._

He stands for a long time looking at it, imagining himself sailing away into the distance on its quick-moving waters. It’s the kind of daydream he doesn’t allow himself very often: he’s always known that his duty is to be in the present, serving his kingdom in whatever way he can, and honestly he’s never wanted to change that. But right now the thought of sailing away to some foreign adventure seems strangely alluring.

He looks up finally to find Jonny looking at him. Jonny twitches and looks away, like he’s been caught at something. “Seabs is keeping watch,” he says defensively.

“That’s fine,” Patrick says. He’s not going to tell them how to do their jobs. Jonny still looks kind of shifty, though, and Patrick’s not sure where it’s coming from. “Let’s go to the market,” he says.

The market is the opposite of the river: bustling and cramped instead of wide and peaceful. Patrick’s happy to be here, too, though, after his weeks of too much quiet. He buys some kind of meat-and-pastry thing for himself and one each for Jonny and Seabs, and they munch them while Patrick looks through the wares of the weapon sellers (nothing worth buying in the sword department, though there are some throwing knives Jackie would have a fit over).

Jonny and Seabs don’t seem to be enjoying the market as much as Patrick is. “You know, you’re only making me more obvious,” he says to Jonny, who’s looking around the crowd like he’s trying to figure out which of them is the assassin. “Seabs is doing way better than you.”

“Seabs doesn’t have primary responsibility for your well-being,” Jonny says, glaring at a small child who made the mistake of squawking.

“Or maybe he’s just a better actor,” Patrick says. “Don’t they train you in stealth or something?”

Jonny doesn’t answer; instead he grabs Patrick and whirls him against a building, putting his own body between Patrick and the crowd. “Fuck!” Patrick says when he’s caught his breath at least partly. “What is it, did someone drop a—”

“Palace guardsmen,” Jonny says curtly, and Patrick cranes his neck just enough to see that Jonny’s right: there’s a line of palace guardsmen clearing a path through the crowd. They’re wearing the distinctive red-and-blue uniform Jonny and Seabs left off for the day.

“There are a ton of them,” Patrick says. “What are they even—”

But he doesn’t have to finish the thought, because a trumpet blows, and the royal carriage is approaching.

Patrick falls silent and keeps his head down behind Jonny. Jonny’s looming over him, blocking him from view; Patrick can smell the leather of his armor and another scent he knows from their morning sparring sessions: the faint trace of fresh sweat, something that’s just particularly Jonny. It feels a little weird to be able to recognize it so easily.

The crowd jostles around them, pushing to make room for the carriage, and Jonny gets shoved closer until they’re almost chest to chest.

Patrick’s not sure what it is that makes him breath in so sharply. Once he does, it’s hard to slow his breathing back down to normal; he’s half-panting, getting lungfuls of the leather-and-Jonny scent. Jonny’s hand is on the wall just next to his head, his own head leaning in close to shield Patrick from sight. It means that his mouth is level with Patrick’s eyes. Patrick finds his eyes resting on it, tracking Jonny’s lips as they part a little bit. There’s a scar on Jonny’s upper lip, a little snag of white toward the right side, and Patrick suddenly wants to see him lick it—wants his tongue to dart out and touch that spot, leave it wet and glistening—

He forces his eyes down. Jonny’s arm is clenched next to his head. His breath is a little fast, too, probably worried about the royal carriage that’s thundering toward them across the cobblestones. It probably wouldn’t be any better for Jonny than it would be for Patrick if he were caught out with insufficient guard. It occurs to Patrick there are probably even better ways to hide him. He could actually press himself against Jonny’s body—push his face into Jonny’s shoulder, hide it against his neck, breathe in that scent from even closer—

The carriage rumbles right by them, the sound shaking up from Patrick’s toes through chest and to the top of his head. The crowd starts moving again once it’s past, pushing back out into the street. Jonny doesn’t move right away; he stays pressed close to Patrick, near enough Patrick can feel his breath ruffling the top of his hair. It’s not necessary anymore, and Patrick should tell him to move away; he will, any minute now. Any minute.

Just when Patrick’s drawing breath to say something—he doesn’t know what—Jonny does step away, and it’s all normal again. Patrick presses a hand to the flush on his cheeks.

“Geez, they could pick wider streets to go down,” Seabs says, joining them, and Patrick shakes himself out and decides it’s about time to go home.

He has no idea what was with him, back there—it was just Jonny doing his job. Patrick didn’t have to feel weird about it. But it was a tense situation. It’s probably better not to read too much into it.

***

The day they leave for the hunting trip dawns bright and cool. By the time the sun rises, Patrick’s already outside and in the coach, groggy from waking up and forcing down breakfast even earlier than usual. It’s a long way to the hunting lodge.

Jonny and Seabs are coming on the trip, along with Sharpy and Shawzy and Duncs and a bunch of other guards Patrick’s met on the evening shifts. They’re all riding together as a unit. Patrick had the vague idea there were a lot of them under Jonny’s command, but he hadn’t quite put together that it was a distinct body of men, not just a subset of the castle guard at large.

“Of course you have your own guard,” Sharpy says when they all stop down for lunch. Patrick started out eating with Gareth and the other nobles, but Gareth suggested that Patrick stretch his legs while he talk to his advisers, and Patrick ended up finding the circle of his guard.

There were still a bunch of guards he hadn’t properly introduced himself to. He’s fixed that now, and he feels his belated guilt ebb away as they offer him a spot in the circle. They’re all pretty chill about him, not intimidated like most of the servants. Maybe it comes from carrying their own swords.

“What did you think, we were just guarding you for the hell of it?” Sharpy asks.

“Yeah, I thought you were hobbyists,” Patrick says. “You just really liked standing in doorways.”

“Tazer here organized the squad,” Duncs says. “Vetted us all mercilessly.”

“Hey, I wasn’t going to have inferior soldiers guarding the prince consort,” Jonny says, defensive.

Sharpy bats his eyelashes at Jonny. “Aw, you think we’re the best guards in the land.”

“That’s right,” Jonny says, jaw jutting out. “And you’d better be. No mistakes guarding Pa—guarding the prince consort.”

Patrick bites down on a grin as the other guards tease Jonny about how much he really loves them all. He’s glad they’re all here, especially now that he knows they’re his. Well, sort of his—obviously they still work for the kingdom. But they feel like his, united in this circle. His more than anyone else’s.

“So what’s this place we’re going to?” Patrick asks. “Are we roughing it in the middle of nowhere, or what?”

“Oh yeah, because you must have it so tough, riding in that carriage,” Sharpy says. “You’re really going to need to recover after that.”

Patrick grins with his teeth showing. “You jealous?”

“Not jealous enough to be cooped up for hours,” Sharpy says, and he has a point, though Patrick’s not gonna say so.

“I think the hunting lodge is pretty comfortable,” Seabs says. “You don’t have to worry about sleeping rough. Not like Shawzy here.”

Shawzy squawks for some reason Patrick doesn’t get. “Hey, I did great that time we had to sleep outside!”

“We were in _tents,_ ” Bicks says, and Shawzy grumbles while everyone laughs at him.

“Shawzy’s father is a baronet,” Seabs explains to Patrick. “He’s had a few things to get used to.”

Patrick looks at Shawzy with interest. He knows that sometimes younger sons do go into service as guardsmen; there were a few in the palace guard in Kanedom. “Has it been tough?” he asks.

“Hey, no, I am super good at it,” Shawzy says, talking to Patrick and also the other guys who are still teasing them. “I asked for a softer blanket that _once—_ ”

“You asked for cashmere!” Duncs says.

“Only because I didn’t know it was expensive!” Shawzy says. “And it’s not like I’m going to inherit, not like—hey.” He cuts off when Seabs kicks him.

Patrick looks around, confused. The guards are looking at each other. No—they’re looking at Jonny, whose ears are red.

Patrick frowns at him. “Are you…” he says, not completing the thought because it seems like he must be wrong. He’s known Jonny for weeks now; he’d know if he were the heir to a title somewhere. But it would explain some things, like Jonny’s sword training, and his lack of fear of Patrick from the start—

“It’s not important,” Jonny says firmly. “I’m here to guard you, not to be my father’s son.”

_Yeah, but,_ Patrick almost says, but swallows it down. Jonny’s here to do a job; he doesn’t have to share personal information if he doesn’t want to. But now that Patrick knows: “Who is your father?”

There’s a short silence in which Jonny looks like he’s trying desperately to come up with a way to get out of answering. Then Shawzy says, “The Archduke of Winnipeg.”

Patrick’s eyebrows go up. “The Archduke of—”

“Ow!” Shawzy says, pulling his arm away from Duncs. “He asked; he’s the _prince consort._ I can’t just not tell him—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jonny says fiercely. “I’m here as a guard because I’m good at fighting. I’m not any different from the rest of you.”

“Ouch,” Sharpy says. “You wound us.”

“Okay, maybe I’m different from Sharpy,” Jonny says, and a few people laugh. But Patrick finds it hard to keep up with the conversation when it moves on.

It really doesn’t matter, he thinks, once he’s back in the carriage and they’re on the move again. It’s not gonna change any of the ways he interacts with Jonny. He doesn’t understand why it feels like something within him has shifted towards unsteadiness. Jonny clearly likes being a guard, and his father probably has decades left to live; Jonny’s not going to leave anytime soon. And Patrick never thought Jonny was going to be his guard forever. The guard always had pretty high turnover in Kane Castle: people getting promoted out of bodyguard duty; people getting transferred elsewhere; new recruits getting trained in a variety of positions to create flexibility among the palace armsmen. Of course Jonny wasn’t going to be his guard for his entire life, even if he weren’t heir to the most powerful province of Rangeland.

So it doesn’t change anything. But Patrick’s glad Gareth is engaged in correspondence for the rest of the trip, so he doesn’t notice how distracted Patrick is.

***

The conversation with Shawzy left Patrick with the vague impression that the hunting lodge would be rough. But his room is just about as well-appointed as his room at Range Castle, and he wakes up on comfortable sheets when the sun is just peeking over the horizon.

The hounds are baying eagerly when Patrick goes outside in his leathers. They didn’t do this a lot in Kanedom, but Patrick knows what to do in a hunting party. They’re boar hunting, which Patrick prefers to fox—he always hates the idea that some poor fox is going to get killed for this. It’s harder to feel sympathy for a boar.

He’s going to be sore at the end of the day, but he knows what to do on a horse, too, and he immediately likes the one he gets given, a restive bay named Bootsy. She has the kind of energy Patrick’s good at taming, responding to every little twitch of her mouth with an equally subtle twitch of the reins until they understand each other.

He was right about being sore: he enjoys himself during the morning, but by the time they stop for lunch, he can feel the places where the riding is working his unpracticed muscles. He can also see where Bootsy is getting antsy standing in a crowd of other horses with the grooms, so he decides to kill two birds with one stone and walk her over to a nearby clearing. 

Surprise, surprise—Jonny falls in step with him as soon as he starts moving. “Where are you going?” Jonny asks.

“Trying not to be a solid mass of muscle spasms tomorrow,” Patrick says, stretching himself out as he walks. “Why, were are you going?”

“Ha, ha,” Jonny says, rolling his eyes. “You shouldn’t leave the group.”

“Mmhm,” Patrick says. He can tell by now when Jonny’s just saying what he feels like he’s supposed to as Patrick’s guard, as opposed to when he really means it. This is definitely the former. Besides, it’s a gorgeous day and the dappled sunlight is warm on Patrick’s shoulders and Bootsy is nuzzling him in the back of the knee every few steps and, most importantly, he’s not in the castle right now. He’s going to enjoy it.

The clearing is one of those almost-too-perfect idyllic spots: long grass dotted with little blue flowers and just enough tree cover to not be full sunlight everywhere. Patrick loops Bootsy’s reins over a branch and collapses on his back on the grass.

He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them again Jonny is standing over him. “Still stretching your muscles?” Jonny asks dryly.

“That’s right,” Patrick says, grinning lazily up at him and stretching his arms and legs as far as they go. “You want to join me?”

Something passes over Jonny’s face—hard to say what, since he’s shadowed against the brightness of the sky, but Patrick’s heart starts beating more quickly for some reason. Jonny takes a step back, looking away. “No, I—I’m good.”

“That’s right,” Patrick says. “Your muscles are too good to need stretching.”

“I didn’t say _that,_ ” Jonny says. “I don’t go riding all that often, either.”

“But it feels nice, on a day like this,” Patrick says, not really wanting to argue when the sun on his face feels this good. He tips his head back, and a minute later Jonny sits down nearby.

They’re silent for a few minutes, soaking up the sunshine, and then Jonny says, in a low voice, “Sorry I didn’t tell you.”

It doesn’t take Patrick more than a second to guess what Jonny’s talking about—it hasn’t been as much on his mind this morning, but it’s not far in the background, either. “It’s okay. I mean, I didn’t ask.”

“I know,” Jonny says, sounding vaguely frustrated with himself. “I just—I don’t know. I didn’t want you to think it was strange that I was doing this.”

And…huh. That makes it sound like Jonny was deliberately not telling him. Patrick had assumed he just didn’t care enough to mention it. “Do most people think it’s strange?” he asks carefully.

“Yeah,” Jonny says, like it should be obvious. “I could be here at the court as a courtier. I could be at home preparing to run my father’s estate. I could be doing whatever I want. Most people in my position don’t join the palace guard.”

“So why did you do it?” Patrick asks.

Jonny’s quiet for a minute. “You know that feeling when you’re holding a sword, like you’ve never felt alive like this before?”

Patrick has to bite his lip, hard, he understands so instantly. He was lucky in that he didn’t have to leave his home to keep a sword in his hand: he had a training master, a sister who fought almost as well as he did, matches against the best fencers of the other houses of Kanedom. But Rangeland doesn’t have anything like the fencing culture of Kanedom. He can understand why someone who wanted to hold a sword would need to seek a military occupation. And why someone of noble birth might be pushed toward the safer occupation of the guard rather than the army proper.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I get that.”

“My parents don’t like it,” Jonny says. “They thought I should just—keep training at home, or whatever—but I’ve never regretted it. It’s been so—it’s better here. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Patrick is seized with a sudden pang of jealousy: that Jonny has found his best life here and now, while Patrick’s—but no, he refuses to believe his best life is behind him. This will become his best life. He hasn’t even been here two months. He and Gareth will be—it will get better.

“The other guards are really great,” he says.

“Yeah,” Jonny says softly. “They are.”

He has his head tipped back now, eyes closed. Patrick gets caught on the sunlight on his skin: on the way it brings out the golden glow, the tan undertones that seem to shine in the sun. His jaw is relaxed, his lips parted a little. His eyelashes are casting little dark shadows on his cheeks.

Patrick blinks and looks back in the direction of the hunting party to distract from whatever funny thing his stomach is doing. He can’t see the others, but he can vaguely hear the bustle of voices and animals, over the soft hush of Jonny’s breathing and the munching as Bootsy steals a few bites of grass.

“I guess we should get back,” he starts to say, reluctantly, just as a snap rings through the air.

It’s loud, like one piece of metal hitting another. Patrick jumps a little in surprise, and Bootsy jerks like she’s been shot, snaps the twig holding her reins, and takes off into the woods.

“Fuck!” Patrick shouts, and starts running after her. Stupid; how is he going to outrun a horse? But he can’t just leave her bolting into the woods. He has to chase her.

“Patrick!” Jonny shouts behind him, and then he’s running, too, crashing through the trees just behind.

He probably wants Patrick to come back, but fuck if Patrick’s going to abandon his horse. It’s easy to figure out where Bootsy went: she’s leaving a trail of broken branches behind her, and they can hear her panicked whinnies.

Jonny catches up to him, longer legs doing their work. “Patrick, we’ve got to—”

“The trees are slowing her down,” Patrick says. He’s still flat-out. Easier for him than for a horse who’s too frantic to duck. Then suddenly the ground gives way without warning, a hill that was hidden by the thick undergrowth, and Patrick finds himself losing his footing and rolling crazily down the slope.

It’s a dizzying spiral of wet leaves and mud and the ground slamming into his shoulders. Patrick comes to a stop at the bottom of the hill, panting and staring up at the tree branches above.

“Patrick!” Jonny skids to his knees next to him, eyes wide like he thinks Patrick is probably dead or something. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Patrick says, taking stock. He’s really gross, though: the ground down hear is a leafy, mucky mess, a muddy lowland with a creek a dozen yards away. He can feel the mud sliding around underneath his clothing.

Jonny’s hands are on his shoulders, and Patrick gets a grip on Jonny’s arms to pull himself up. That brings their faces close together, and Patrick’s eyes catch on Jonny’s. His eyes are flared, concerned, this really dark brown, and Patrick looks away quickly and takes in a gulp of air.

It doesn’t help: his stomach feels overheated, like the air is fueling some chemical reaction made of ingredients Patrick doesn’t remember providing. Jonny’s hands are still on his shoulders. Patrick wonders if he can feel how fast his heart is beating.

“What—Bootsy?” he asks, not even sure what words were supposed to be in the middle there.

“Oh.” Jonny looks up, away from Patrick. “Uh. She’s over there.”

Patrick turns to look. Jonny’s hands slide off his shoulders and leave heat trails in their wake. Bootsy’s across the little stream, reins tangled in a stand of trees; she’s tugging against them, still half-panicked. She gives a whinny and tries to rear.

Patrick gets up to go to her, but Jonny’s ahead of him, already striding across the stream. “Whoa, girl,” Jonny says, getting close to her head. “It’s all right. You’re okay.”

Her coat ripples as he puts a hand on it, and she tries to dance out of the way, but she calms down enough at the touch for Patrick to slip in and get to her head. “There you go, like Jonny said,” Patrick says. “You’re good. Right, girl? Such a good horse.”

He touches his hands lightly to her face and neck, lets her scent him. She calms down slowly, long moments passing as her breathing evens out. “There you go,” Patrick says. “I’m gonna give you to Jonny while I untangle your reins, okay?”

Patrick can feel Jonny’s eyes on him as he works to get the reins out of the bushes without pulling on Bootsy’s mouth. When Patrick’s done, Jonny looks at him like he’s going to say something, and Patrick’s stomach jumps a little in anticipation—but all Jonny says is, “They’re going to think I attacked you if I bring you back like this.”

It’s a decent point. Patrick looks down at his muddy self. They’re bound to be looking for him by now, but he can’t let them find him looking like he got dunked in a pit of mud and leaves. “Well, there’s a simple solution to that,” he says, and hands the reins to Jonny so he can go and jump into the creek.

It’s too shallow to cover most of him, but its course is irregular enough that there are a few deeper parts. Patrick sinks into one over head head and shakes his hair out underwater before bursting back up into the air.

When he looks up, Jonny’s standing on the bank holding the horse. “You are crazy,” he says flatly.

“What, too afraid to join me?” Patrick says, and really, he should have known better, because Jonny doesn’t waste any time tying up Bootsy and pulling off his leathers. He jumps in next to Patrick hard enough to send a sheet of water splashing over him.

“You dick,” Patrick says, shoving him, and then Jonny’s hands are on his chest, trying to grip, sliding over his wet clothing. They send a bolt of heat through Patrick even in the cold of the water, and he twists away, pretending like he’s focused on cleaning off the mud.

When he turns back, Jonny has his shirt off.

Patrick doesn’t mean to stare, but he can’t help it. He knew Jonny was well-muscled—the way he fences, there’s no way he could be anything else. But he hadn’t thought about what that would look like. At least, he tried not to. And even if he had—there’s no way he could have imagined the thickness of his shoulders, the way the muscles of his back gather and bunch as he beats his shirt on the rock, the way it all tapers to his waist before swelling out again—

Jonny straightens up, shirt in hands, and turns toward Patrick. Water is trickling down his chest, drops clinging to the faint curls of hair and the brown buds of his nipples. “Do you want me to do yours?” Jonny asks.

Patrick can’t really think any word except _yes._ He doesn’t say it out loud, because if he did, he feels like he’d be agreeing to—but no. It’s just his shirt. Jonny’s offering to clean his shirt.

“Sure,” Patrick says, voice weird but maybe not so weird Jonny will notice. Jonny strides toward him, and Patrick starts fumbling to take off his shirt, because if he doesn’t he has the very strong suspicion Jonny will try to do it himself and then Patrick, well, Patrick doesn’t know what will happen.

He’s too slow—his shirt is still only halfway up his chest when Jonny gets to him, and Jonny seizes it and pulls it the rest of the way, his hands trailing up Patrick’s chest as he does so. Patrick’s whole body is hot like he’s dying of fever. He falls back into the water, dunking his head under and holding his breath for a long half-minute, willing the water to bring him back to normal.

When he comes back up, Jonny’s beating the dirt out of Patrick’s shirt. Patrick busies himself getting the mud out of his pants. He doesn’t want to think about what would happen if Jonny took those off for him right now.

They get out of the stream, and Jonny catches Patrick’s arm and looks him up and down. Patrick’s body prickles under the attention. His shirt is white, and now it’s wet, and he’s sure his nipples are showing through it. Jonny is staring at him. What if he—

“You’ve still got mud,” Jonny says, raising a hand and touching a thumb to Patrick’s temple.

Patrick closes his eyes while Jonny rubs it away. Then he opens them again, slowly, feeling like he’s blinking through molasses.

Jonny’s still looking at him. “Thanks,” Patrick says, tearing his gaze away, and shakes himself off and climbs out to fetch Bootsy.

The rest of Patrick’s guards are already looking for him when he and Jonny make it back to the clearing. “We were about to send out the hounds,” Sharpy says when they come into view. Then he gets a better look. “What the fuck happened to you?”

“Horse bolted,” Jonny says.

“Into a rainstorm?” Sharpy asks, expression sliding towards a smirk.

Patrick doesn’t like the smirk: there’s nothing to suspect, but he still somehow feels like Sharpy does, in some vague undefined way. “There was a stream involved.”

“Apparently very involved,” Sharpy says, looking them over again. “Guys! We found them!” he called to the other guards.

The rest of the hunt is…well, Patrick’s clothes are still wet, which isn’t great, and he’s also kind of sore from rolling down the slope. But even without that he doesn’t think he’d be able to focus. He keeps falling back from where he should be in the group, or not paying attention to whether Bootsy is getting too close to other horses. He just…he can’t get his mind off that sight in the stream. Jonny, with water pouring down the muscles of his back, droplets studding his chest. Every time he thinks about it a slow wave of heat rolls from his throat to the bottom of his gut.

They don’t catch the boar. There’s feasting that night anyway, venison and game hen, and Patrick dances with the king. “Are you having a good time at the hunt?” Gareth asks.

“Yeah, just a little tired,” Patrick says. It isn’t a lie.

“You shouldn’t feel like you need to stay up if you want to sleep,” Gareth says, touching Patrick’s cheek.

It’s a gesture he’s made before, when they’re together in front of the court, but it doesn’t usually make Patrick’s stomach twinge like it does now. It’s a cousin to pleasure but not actually pleasant.

It’s obviously time for Patrick to do something here. Gareth is trying to give Patrick his space. He’s affectionate when they’re together, but has told Patrick time and time again that he should take the time he needs to get settled in. It’s probably time for Patrick to tell him that he’s ready.

But maybe…maybe it doesn’t have to be tonight. 

“Yeah,” Patrick says. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

He does, retreating to his bedroom in the company of Duncs and Seabs, his guards for the moment. Patrick’s kind of glad Jonny isn’t there. He’s been thinking about what he’ll do as soon as he climbs into his bed for a few hours now, and it feels like it would be weirder with Jonny there.

He climbs into bed, remembers Jonny’s hands skimming up his wet chest, and wraps his hand around his cock.

He gets hard so fast. It’s usually pretty fast—he’s only eighteen—but he’s been half-hard in his breeches all evening, and now it’s only two or three strokes before he reaches that point where his cock is so swollen it feels like the skin is going to burst. There are already little explosions along all his nerves, fiery brightness blooming as he strokes down his length and remembers Jonny’s back muscles working as he beat his shirt against the rocks. Jonny’s pants were soaked through, clinging tight to his body, and remembering the roundness of his ass makes Patrick gasp and stroke himself faster. And then after Jonny turned, the little tight brown nipples—

Patrick fucks his hips up into his hand and imagines sucking on those nipples while heat spikes through his stomach. In his imagination, Jonny is reacting just as strongly, tipping his head back and moaning as Patrick sucks and bites. Jonny would be getting hard, and then maybe—Patrick could sink to his knees on the rocks of the river and peel off those soaking-wet pants and—

Patrick’s hips buck, and he doesn’t even have time to get his hand in place to catch it before he comes in long, white streaks across his chest.

***

He was more right than he knew yesterday: he’s not just sore in the morning. He’s practically immobile.

Patrick sits up in bed quickly, not thinking about it, and yelps out load at the screaming pain along his thighs and glutes and abs. He manages to staggar out of bed—just as the door to his room opens and his guards burst in.

It’s Jonny in the lead, Sharpy right behind him, and they burst in to the sight of Patrick standing there in his nightshirt, legs bare and cloth sticking to his chest with last night’s come.

Jonny stops, takes in the sight, and then his face goes red. “What happened? Are you all right?” he asks, looking away, eyes darting back to Patrick and away again like he keeps forgetting not to look.

“I…I’m just sore,” Patrick says, trying to sound like this isn’t the most humiliating thing to ever have happened to him. “It’s nothing. Sorry to bother you.”

“Oh.” Jonny’s face is so red Patrick feels like he should be able to feel the heat from here. Or maybe he can—his own face does feel hot. Sharpy is behind Jonny, fighting visibly not to laugh. “It’s—no problem.”

“Yeah, well.” Patrick wonders if it’s possible to burst into flames from blushing too much.

“Um.” Jonny kicks at the ground. “Do you, um. Should we—”

“How about we have the servants come and draw you a bath?” Sharpy says, seizing Jonny by the arm and pulling him back out of the room.

“Yeah, that would be…good,” Patrick says, as the door closes on the last glimpse of Jonny’s brick-red face. Then he scrunches up his face and falls onto the bed, swallowing down a groan of pain at the movement.

The bath helps with the muscle pain (and the stickiness on his chest), if not with the embarrassment. Patrick’s afraid Jonny will be weird around him—but Jonny’s pretty normal at breakfast. He even defends Patrick when the other guards make fun of him for being sore from yesterday’s riding, which, okay, is maybe not normal Jonny behavior, but it’s kind of nice.

“Who are you, and what have you done with Captain Toews?” Patrick asks when Jonny tells the other guards not to be mean to him. Jonny rolls his eyes and pushes him away with a hand to the face, and when Patrick turns away, Sharpy’s smirking at him.

Hm. Maybe _he’s_ the one Patrick should have worried about being weird.

Turns out yes: Sharpy continues to look intolerably smug for the next two days of hunting, like he knows something Patrick doesn’t. It’s very unnerving. But Jonny’s being normal to him, and Patrick’s muscles start to remember their old skills, and overall he doesn’t have much to complain about.

On the third day they finally catch the boar. The feast that night puts all other feast to shame, except maybe the coronation. Patrick drinks more mead than he should and lets a bunch of nobles whirl him around the floor—he rode well today, finally, and he feels like maybe he’s getting some of them to think well of him. He ends up dancing with Gareth near the end of the evening, a slower song, and he tries to enjoy the feeling of Gareth’s hands on him.

He’s been putting off the guilt for the past two days. It doesn’t matter what he thinks about when he’s jerking off—and he’s never even seen Gareth naked. Of course it’s harder to fantasize about him. But he is his husband, and Patrick should really get started on, you know, getting some material to fantasize about.

He leans in close when the song is over. The mead is heating his blood, and it’s enough to give him the courage to do what he’s supposed to. “Should we go to bed?” he says in Gareth’s ear, putting as much significance as possible into the words.

He feels Gareth go still momentarily. “Of course,” he says, and leads Patrick out of the main hall of the hunting lodge, saying goodbye to people as he goes. His hand is once again on the small of Patrick’s back.

Once they’re out of the hall, Patrick’s nerves start coming back. He’s not sure he wants—but no, of course he does. This is what he agreed to. He knew the deal, and he decided to do it, and the peace between two kingdoms depends on it. He’s going to make this a real marriage.

He asked his mother, before he left, how it felt to marry his father. It wasn’t the same as him and Gareth, obviously—Patrick’s parents married for love—but she had just finished telling him what he needed to know about sex, and he wanted something to reassure him that the strange mix of feelings in his gut when he thought about it was unfounded. “But how does it _feel?_ ” he kept asking, not about the sex itself, but about…the whole thing. Being close to someone that way. Having a marriage.

“It was strange, at first,” she said, after she’d figured out what exactly he was asking. “Even though we wanted to marry each other, it took a while to adjust to having this other person be so much a part of my life, so…intimately. It kept taking me by surprise at first. But every time we were together, it felt more like it was part of who I was. Eventually we built a life that had both of us together at the foundation of it.”

Patrick can’t see his way with Gareth to that place his parents found. But he figures his mother couldn’t at first, either—and if he _could_ see his way, he’d pretty much already be there. He just needs to take the first few steps.

His stomach still jerks as Gareth leads him into the bedroom. The bed looms large in a way it hasn’t since that very first week. This time—

“Sleep well,” Gareth says, taking his hand off Patrick’s back, and Patrick sways a little, unsupported.

He’s about to go to the connecting door—quickly, to try to cover up his own surprise, smooth the moment over—but then he stops. He doesn’t need to go without saying anything. That’s the coward’s way out.

He swallows, opens his mouth, licks the dryness off his lips. “But what about,” he says.

Gareth is looking at him curiously when Patrick looks back at him. Then his face gets thoughtful, like he’s evaluating Patrick. “I think not tonight,” he says, and turns away, his face smooth and unreadable.

So…okay. That’s. Well.

Patrick does go to the connecting door, then, shame licking hot in his stomach. There’s no reason to be ashamed, not really. But there’s something about Gareth—he feels like a wall sometimes, one that Patrick can crash into but can’t push back against. It’s not like with Jonny, or Sharpy, or most of the people Patrick’s known in his life, where when they do or say something Patrick doesn’t like or understand it makes him want to talk back to them more, not less. He wonders if it has something to do with Gareth being king, or being his husband—after all, Patrick is going to spend the next however many decades with this man. He can’t afford to mess it up at the beginning.

So maybe it’s Gareth who wants to wait for sex now. Patrick can deal with that.

It’s probably bad that a part of Patrick is relieved. He can’t help it: it’s an instinctive reaction, his shoulders relaxing as he shuts the connecting door behind him. He _would_ have done it—he’s ready to do what he needs to in order to make this life his own. But he’s kind of glad he doesn’t have to yet.

He takes the unguent out of his pocket and turns it over in his hands as he sits down on the bed. He still hasn’t actually tried it, even though he remembers the thrill he felt when he first thought of using it. He thinks about it now, about sliding something slick up inside of him, and it makes his gut feel kind of wobbly and hot.

He doesn’t open the unguent. He’s not sure what kind of mess it would make, and he’s embarrassed at the thought of the servants finding it on the sheets. But he does lie down and picture it, a long cock sliding into him, makes him clench down as he strokes his hand over his length. He feels empty, in an irritating way, like he really wants to be fuller than this.

He comes with his thighs trembling and the muscles of his ass working, and it’s not Gareth’s face that’s in his mind when he does.

***

They ride back the next day, and Patrick’s routine returns to normal. But normal isn’t exactly how things feel.

Jonny’s just always there. Fencing with him, panting and dripping with sweat. Turning aside his blade with an impact Patrick can feel through his bones. Sitting quietly next to him in their tower room, looking out at the horizon while Patrick’s eyes steal up from his book to look at him, the lines of his body looking like something Patrick could lean against, maybe tilt his head up, open his mouth, and—

No one else ever touches him here, is part of the problem. The formal dances that sometimes happen with dinner don’t involve much in the way of physical contact. Gareth touches him sometimes when they’re at dinner, but they’re just small fleeting touches that are undermined by Patrick knowing Gareth doesn’t want to follow them up in private.

Patrick’s used to having three sisters who’ll tackle him at a moment’s notice, and parents who hug him at least once a day. He’s used to the whole family lying in a pile in the evenings, for what used to be story time when they were little and later became a time for the five of them to talk over whatever was on their minds. Now Jonny’s actually the person who touches him the most: adjusting his stance while they’re fencing, showing him a new move; grabbing his foot when Patrick kicks him in the thigh while they debate politics in the tower. Every time Jonny touches him, Patrick feels the contact ring through his whole body.

He’s horribly afraid Jonny’s going to notice. He doesn’t think Jonny knows yet; he can’t imagine Jonny would still treat him normally, like someone he respects, if he’d figured it out. Jonny doesn’t seem all that close to the king, but his father is one of the king’s most important nobles, and Jonny has to know how importance the royal marriage is to the kingdom’s stability. Patrick can only imagine what Jonny would think of him if he knew how badly Patrick wanted to cheat on his husband.

It makes Patrick awkward, pulling back from touches before he wants to because he’s afraid Jonny can tell how much he’s hoarding them up. He tries to distract himself, reading more when they’re up in the tower together, focusing on the burn of his own muscles when they do fencing exercises together and not on the way the sweat is rolling down Jonny’s neck.

Jonny’s just so—he’s noble, and he’s true, and he’s brilliant with a sword, and yeah, he kind of has a stick up his ass about rules and duty and control, but he cares so much about doing his job well. He cares so much about guarding Patrick. Sword-fighting with him is one of the best things Patrick’s done in his life, second only to arguing with him, to the intense discussions they have up in the tower where Patrick can feel Jonny’s whole attention on him like concentrated fire. It’s heady. It’s a drug. Patrick doesn’t know how he’s supposed to resist.

Probably he could request a different guard captain. Get someone he doesn’t care about, someone who can’t make his knees weak with a single glance. But even if he could do that without hurting Jonny’s reputation—he can’t bring himself to. Jonny’s all he has, it feels like.

There’s one day when they’re fighting in the dancing room, Seabs standing near the doorway, when Jonny gets the advantage and shoves Patrick up against the wall. Patrick’s already in a heightened state, pulse thundering in his ears and blood racing from the fight, and now his arms are straining to keep his practice sword up against the pressure of Jonny’s. Their bodies are so close that Patrick can feel the heat of Jonny’s against his own. He can feel it when Jonny’s leg moves, sliding between Patrick’s—

Patrick manages to throw himself to the side, losing his balance in his urgency to flee. He ends up falling to the floor, where he uses the opportunity to pull his knees up in front of him.

“Are you okay?” Jonny asks, and Patrick can’t answer immediately. He feels like his whole body is throbbing, the feeling centered between his legs, where Jonny’s thigh pressed for just a second, one bright, blazing moment of heat.

Seabs is coming over, too, a look of concern on his face. Jonny reaches out, a hand stretching toward Patrick’s shoulder, and Patrick can’t. If Jonny touches him right now, Patrick doesn’t actually know what he’ll do.

He throws up a hand to forestall Jonny’s. “I’m fine,” he says. “I’m just—maybe that’s enough for today?”

Jonny still looks really concerned. Patrick wants to stand up, assuage his fears, but he’s pretty sure that would be a bad idea right now. His cock is straining against his breeches. He’s not sure he’ll ever not be hard again.

“Yeah,” Seabs says, sounding confused but also like he wants to defuse the tension. “Maybe you guys should call it a morning.”

Jonny turns away to strip off his gloves, and Patrick takes the chance to put his head down on his knees and think really unsexy thoughts. Chamber pots. Rotten food. Gareth’s hand on his cheek the night before. He’s a terrible person.

Later that day, when they’re in the tower, he says to Jonny, “Maybe we should think about teaching some of the other guards how to fence.”

They’ve been reading—Jonny’s apparently decided that they’re safe enough in the tower that he can keep his eyes on a book. The two of them are sitting on the ledge, not quite touching, but close enough that Patrick can feel the whole left side of his body straining toward contact. It’s been a struggle not to give in to it.

Now Jonny looks up from his book. “Like…”

“In the morning sessions,” Patrick clarifies. He feels almost like he’s betraying Jonny by suggesting it—it’s their time, those morning training sessions. Except that Jonny’s his guard and nothing of Patrick’s should be his and Jonny probably doesn’t think about it that way anyway. “Like, Seabs might want to learn, you know? And the others, too. I know they get regular guard training or whatever, but I’m betting it’s not on the level of what we do.”

Jonny huffs a breath. “You’ve got that right.” He’s silent for a moment, looking out over the city toward the hills. “Yeah,” he says finally. “We can do that.”

“Great,” Patrick says, not sure if he’s more relieved or disappointed.

He’s expecting a few other guards to be in the dancing room when they go the next morning. Seabs has been teasing him and Jonny the whole way over, asking if they’ll really be able to hold back to let anyone else get a blow in. Patrick’s going over possible exercises in his head, and when they reach the dancing room, for a second he thinks they’re in the wrong place.

He blinks in the doorway. There are like ten people in there—basically his entire guard. “What?” he says blankly.

Jonny blinks at him when Patrick looks over. “You did want me to invite them for today, right?”

“Yeah, but…” It really is everyone. He can’t think of anyone who’s not here. “I didn’t expect everyone to come.”

“Like we would miss it,” Shawzy says. “After the way Tazer talks about you?”

Patrick looks at Jonny again. His face looks a little red. Patrick wants to know what kinds of things Jonny’s been saying, but Jonny claps his hands and says, “Okay! Let’s get started on exercises.”

Patrick makes an effort not to look at Jonny too much during the training sessions, given their large audience, just in case anyone picks up on anything. Fortunately, there’s plenty to distract him—a dozen or so people who think sophisticated sword fighting means not swinging your sword like a cudgel—but there are definitely a couple of times when he catches himself staring at Jonny as demonstrates a lunge or a parry.

Well. He can always pretend he’s looking at the technique.

Jonny is really good at this, actually—not just at fencing, but at teaching other people to do it. The guards look to him naturally, and while they obviously have a lot of respect for Patrick’s skills and position, especially after they see him and Jonny face off in a demo fight, it’s Jonny they look to for approval when they’re working on a new task.

Patrick should maybe resent it, or be jealous. But instead he finds himself feeling warm and happy as he watches Jonny patiently adjust Hartsy’s stance.

It kind of undermines the intended effect of the larger training sessions. It does put Patrick in less close contact with Jonny, but it doesn’t make him want him any less. But it’s a good idea anyway—these guys have a lot of potential, and they’ve obviously had to keep in really good shape, but their sword training is shit.

“Do they just, I don’t know, teach them to swing them around haphazardly?” Patrick asks Jonny that day, up in the tower.

“They might as well,” Jonny says, a tired sort of anger in his face, and it occurs to Patrick that this is probably something Jonny’s been mad about for years. Patrick’s just late to the party. “Quinn is more focused on battle-level strategy than the skills of any individual swordsman.”

Patrick doesn’t have to ask where Jonny stands on that. It’s written all over him. “But my guard is under your command. Don’t you train them separately?”

Jonny shrugs. “It doesn’t really make a difference. Quinn is very strict about his training protocols.”

That’s what Gareth implied, back when Patrick first asked about training with the guard. He’s ashamed to realize he’d started thinking of that as an excuse. “Won’t you get in trouble for doing this, then?”

Jonny shoots him a surprised look. “We’re training with the prince consort. I’m pretty sure you outrank him.”

“Right,” Patrick says, trying to hide his sudden discomfort. He’s not at all sure he has the kind of pull Jonny’s crediting him with here. He still hasn’t made any headway with Gareth, and he’s wondering if that’s his own fault, for getting so caught up in Jonny.

It does help, a little, not having the alone time with Jonny in the mornings. Not nearly enough. That hits home a couple of nights later, when Jonny ends up on guard duty during the evening meal.

Jonny almost never guards Patrick in the evening. It’s usually Hartsy and Saader, or Sharpy and Shawzy; but there must be some shuffling around of the guard schedule for the day, because Sharpy and Shawzy end up on guard during the daytime, and Jonny and Hartsy take over before dinner.

It doesn’t really occur to Patrick that it will matter. But he’s used to getting his dose of Jonny during the day and spending the evening in the company of people who don’t know him and don’t care to. He’s not used to having someone in the room who he knows as well as he knows Jonny. Feeling Jonny’s eyes on him in this crowd of near-strangers makes it so clear to him how strong that tie is between them. He feels it like a bright thread running across the room; he’s actually kind of amazed that no one else can see it, that Gareth doesn’t lean over and ask who that one guard is, and why is Patrick so close to him?

There are musicians tonight, which means dancing, and Patrick can’t shake the knowledge that Jonny’s looking at his body as it moves around the floor. He wonders if Jonny likes what he—but no; there’s no point in thinking like that. Jonny’s just here to do his job. He’d probably be horrified if he knew Patrick was reacting like this. But Patrick can’t help it: his skin hums with awareness. Every time he looks up and sees Jonny’s eyes on him, it sends a flash of heat down his spine. He thinks half Rangeland must think he’s in love with them now for how much he flushes in people’s arms.

Well, maybe it’ll give them more interesting small talk to make with him.

His body is still warm with it when Gareth walks him back to his rooms. It makes him not want Gareth’s hands on him, and he’s relieved when the servants leave and Gareth moves away. Then it’s just a few minutes before Patrick can slip through the connecting door and lean against it, breathing hard and feeling shivery-urgent all over.

Jonny will be in the guardroom by now. Just one door between them. Patrick could open that door, pull him inside, and—

It’s an insane thought. There are so many reasons why he can’t, and that’s not even touching on the part where Hartsy is standing there, too. Jonny would never go along with it. But Patrick lets himself imagine, just for a moment, what it would be like, and then lets his hand close around his cock where it’s already pushing hot and hard against the cloth of his breeches.

Jonny would kiss him. That’s just the start of it, but it’s already so much: the idea of Jonny’s mouth open against his. Jonny would kiss him like he trains with him: his hands strong and firm on Patrick, moving him where he wants him, the entirety of his focus on Patrick’s reactions. Patrick’s never really kissed anyone before, but his mouth is buzzing with the thought of it, how Jonny’s lips and tongue might move against his.

His cock is leaking through his breeches. He pulls them off and wrestles his shirt off his overheated skin and climbs into bed.

He runs his hands down his body and gets lost in the idea of Jonny on top of him. Jonny’s weight on him and his hands and his shoulders and arms and, oh God, the little dip right above his ass, fuck. Patrick remembers that one from the stream. And Jonny’s _cock_ —it would be hard and bumping against Patrick’s, because Jonny would want him, Jonny wouldn’t turn down the chance to have sex with Patrick—Jonny’s hands on him would be greedy. He’d be panting and sweating like when they fence and neither of them would be able to stop, they’d know it was wrong but they couldn’t stop, not until Jonny’s cock was in his—

It hurts how much Patrick wants Jonny inside of him right now, a deep-down ache that his hand on his cock doesn’t touch. He presses on his own hole to try to relieve it, but it’s not enough.

The unguent is still in his bedside drawer.

Patrick gets it out with hands that are shaky and slippery with sweat. He pushes aside the little voice that tells him this isn’t what the unguent is for—he’s supposed to use it with his husband, for sex, but Gareth doesn’t seem to want that, so to hell with him. Patrick needs something. If he has to do it himself, so be it.

His finger feels funny inside him when he slips it in, coated in the unguent. Not bad-funny, just like his body’s not sure what to make of it. His cock’s not getting any less hard, though. He clenches down and pushes a little farther inside, and that’s a little better. He imagines Jonny’s doing this to him, prepping him to take his cock, and that makes it even better, little shivers running down his thighs.

He wishes he had something bigger to clench down on. He wishes he could stroke his cock properly while he’s doing this. He wishes he had Jonny’s hands on him, mapping his whole body, Jonny’s chest against his back while his fingers push in.

Patrick adds another finger.

He’s panting now like he’s been fighting for hours, mouth open and eyes helplessly shut as he fucks himself. He gets his left hand loosely around his cock, and that gives everything a sheen that makes him feel just a little more out of control. He thrusts his fingers inside himself and imagines what would happen if he moaned out loud right now—if Jonny rushed in and saw him like this, impaled on his own fingers, falling apart—

He bites his tongue hard as he comes, streaking up his naked chest. His hole closes down impossibly tight on his fingers, and that sends another rush through his belly. His ass feels hot, used, and his cheeks feel flushed as he wipes his fingers on some dirty clothes.

Patrick’s body feels different as he lies there afterward. Like he’s broken through some barrier, and he can’t go back to the days when he didn’t know what it was he wanted. But he’s not going to get what he wants; the only person he’s going to be having sex with is Gareth—if they ever do. And even if they don’t, there’s no way he’s going to end up having sex with Jonny.

***

He can’t stop thinking about it, though. He sits next to Jonny up in the tower and aches way down deep in the places he touched himself.

It’s not anything new. He must do a worse job than usual at hiding it, though, because after a while Jonny asks, “Are you okay?”

Patrick startles. He’d been staring out at the clouds above the mountains, trying not to feel how close Jonny was, how small a space Patrick would have to cross to lean his head against Jonny’s shoulder. He opens his mouth to blow the question off—and finds himself saying, “Do you think Gareth will ever let me help govern the country?”

Jonny’s quiet for a while, and when Patrick looks over, he’s frowning at the horizon. “I don’t know,” Jonny says. “He’s been ruling by himself for a long time.”

It’s thoughtful, like Jonny’s trying to give a real answer. “Did the last queen—Laura—did he let her rule?”

“I don’t know, I was pretty young,” Jonny says. It’s been a decade since Laura died—Jonny would barely have been in his teens. “I think she was very active socially. Knew all the nobles, all that.”

Patrick hasn’t been active socially. He knows the names of a lot of nobles from court dinners, men and women twenty or thirty years older than him, but they all smile politely and ask about his health and that’s it. His stomach curdles within him. “I guess I should get on that.”

“You’ve already started,” Jonny says, and Patrick looks at him blankly before realizing he’s talking about himself.

It hadn’t even occurred to him that that was what he was doing. Jonny’s already so deep inside Patrick’s inner circle—he _is_ Patrick’s inner circle here. It feels ludicrous to think of spending time with Jonny as networking with the nobles.

“You going to introduce me around?” Patrick asks.

Jonny laughs. “I don’t really know the nobles in the capital that well. I guess there are some of them I could introduce you to, though, if you wanted me to.”

Such a weird idea, Jonny dressed up in the clothes of the nobility to introduce Patrick around. “You don’t like that stuff, though.”

“I don’t hate it,” Jonny says. “I just like fighting more.” He looks over at Patrick. “I’d do it for you.”

Patrick feels his face getting hot and hopes desperately that it’s not visible. “I should be able to do it myself.”

“No one can introduce themselves into a brand-new society without help,” Jonny says.

“You think?”

“Of course,” Jonny says. Then he hesitates, uncharacteristically. “I…feel like maybe you haven’t been getting the best guidance since you’ve been here.”

It’s one of the more restrained thing Patrick’s ever heard him say. It makes Patrick wonder what he really thinks, though—how much he’s seen of Patrick’s flailing. Probably a lot of it. “I’m all right,” he mumbles.

“But you should be amazing,” Jonny says. Patrick flinches back. “No, not that you—I mean, you _could_ be amazing,” Jonny says quickly. “The way you talk about statecraft with me, the way you’ve gone about leading the men in training—you’d be such an asset to the country. If they’d use you like that.”

It’s all the things Patrick wishes were true and none of the things he deserves. Jonny shouldn’t say things like that when they aren’t true. Jonny shouldn’t say things like that when Patrick has to look him in the face and not start crying.

“Hey.” Jonny’s hand is on his shoulder. “You’re doing okay. It’s their fault if they’re not giving you what you need to do all that.”

“Is it?” Patrick asks. He can’t shake the feeling that if he were someone else, someone better, Gareth would already have involved him in everything. Gareth must have reasons.

“Of course it is,” Jonny says, “you already are amazing,” and Patrick’s losing his battle, the horizon blurring before his eyes, and then Jonny’s hand is on his head, helping him tip over onto his shoulder.

It feels so good to have Jonny’s shoulder under his cheek. Patrick chokes down ragged breaths. Jonny’s hand is in his hair, cupping his head protectively, and Patrick feels like he can’t possibly soak up enough of the feeling. It’s like warmth flowing into him. He hates that he feels like this, knows Jonny would scorn him if he knew—how much this touch means to Patrick, how much he wants it from Jonny and not from his husband the king. But Patrick can’t help it. Every inch of his body is warm with Jonny’s touch. There is no part of him that doesn’t want this.

After a while his breathing evens out, and then he doesn’t have an excuse to leave his head there. He does for a while anyway, though. Jonny’s moving his fingers just a little through his hair, and Patrick isn’t strong enough to pull away from that.

He does eventually. He straightens up, neck a little stiff from the position, face unpleasantly puffy-feeling in the way that comes after crying. He looks over at Jonny to see how he feels about the mini-breakdown Patrick just had, and Jonny’s eyes are on his face. His gaze is intent, like he’s studying it for some purpose, and for some reason it makes Patrick’s breath catch in his throat.

He’s expecting Jonny to say something, to break the mood, make it clear that he’s not feeling the moment like Patrick is. But instead Jonny raises a hand and strokes his fingers over the delicate skin next to Patrick’s eye.

It’s right where the skin is swollen and tender from crying, and Patrick sucks in a breath. Jonny’s fingers travel slowly from the corner of his eye to the soft skin just beneath it. The contact is tugging at the base of Patrick’s stomach, a glittering string pulling all the way through him. Jonny’s eyes are so focused on him. Patrick feels flayed open, like Jonny has laid him out and stripped away all his protective layers. He knows, if Jonny were to try something in this moment, he would—

Jonny jerks back, pulling his fingers from Patrick’s face like he’s been burned. “Sorry,” he says, breaking his gaze away. “Sorry.” Then he’s getting up, all busy movement, leaving Patrick sitting alone and wondering if he’d just imagined all of that.

***

Patrick thinks about that moment a few times afterward. Who is he kidding: he thinks about basically nothing other than that moment. It sits hot within him throughout dinner that night, glowing like coals in his stomach, radiant heat on his face. He’s glad no one ever pays too much attention to him at these dinners, because there’s not much room for anything inside him except the knowledge: Jonny touched him. Jonny’s hands were on his face, like he was precious, like Jonny wanted him.

He knows he’s reading too much into it. He knows, especially as the feeling loses its freshness throughout the evening and starts to settle in like stale sickness in his gut, that it doesn’t matter how much he felt in that moment, because nothing’s going to come of it. Even if Jonny did feel something like what Patrick did—nothing can happen. Patrick made a vow to the man next to him, who’s laughing about something with his chancellor of the exchequer. Their countries made peace as a part of that vow. Patrick can’t mess it up.

Besides, he was probably imagining it anyway.

It doesn’t stop his stomach from jerking an extra amount when he sees Jonny the next morning. He tries to be as normal as he can: normal amounts of eye contact, joining Seabs in ribbing Jonny a little about how he got up early to get in extra sword practice even after his evening shift yesterday.

Jonny seems normal, too. Patrick’s taken by surprise by how disappointed he is by that. It’s a good thing, really, if Jonny didn’t feel what Patrick did, but it still makes Patrick feel curiously flat inside when Jonny’s eyes rest on him only a normal amount of time before turning to sweep over the room.

Really, though, it’s better that way. Patrick should be focusing on how to strengthen his ties to Rangeland, not daydreaming about sabotaging them by cheating on the king.

“I was thinking I’d go talk with Gareth today,” Patrick says when they’re freshly bathed after training with the other guards, at the point when they would usually go up to the tower. It’s been a few weeks since he’s tried to visit Gareth during the day; it’s kind of alarming when he realizes just how much he’s let himself get comfortable in his new routine. No wonder Gareth hasn’t bothered pulling him into any council business. He must think Patrick doesn’t care.

Jonny’s gaze on him is neutral enough. “Good idea,” is all he says.

Gareth’s chamberlain has him wait in the antechamber. Patrick’s expecting that. He sits and glances at Jonny, who’s standing near him in the best position to survey both entrances to the room. There’s light in the antechamber, a window to the south, and sun is pouring in and highlighting the line of Jonny’s jaw, rough with faint stubble, the tendons of his neck tapering down. The light pools in the hollow of his collarbone, a little golden cup—

Patrick drags his eyes away. His husband is just on the other side of that wall. What the hell is wrong with him?

It feels like forever before the chamberlain comes back, which gives Patrick plenty of time to wrench his thoughts back to what he needs to talk to Gareth about and away from how Jonny’s armor fits him in the shoulders. He needs to make a good case for himself today—stand up to whatever Gareth says. He doesn’t _need_ any more time to settle. There’s nothing to settle. He wants to get involved.

The chamberlain bows before him again. “I’m sorry,” he says. “His majesty is unable to receive you today.”

Patrick’s first reaction is shock. It’s probably good, because it keeps him from saying any of the things that immediately spring to his mind. It probably wouldn’t be wise if—

“What?” Jonny says, taking half a step forward. “The king won’t see his own husband?”

The chamberlain looks at him in astonishment, and then does a double take. “Your lordship,” he says, making another bow and looking back and forth between Patrick and Jonny. “Are you here to—I’m sorry, I just assumed—”

“No, I’m here as his highness’s guard,” Jonny says. “And I want to know why—”

“ _Captain Toews_ ,” Patrick barks, and Jonny stops, his mouth drawn tight. Then, to the chamberlain, “I’m sorry to hear his majesty is occupied. I’ll speak with him later.”

He leaves while the chamberlain is still bowing, getting Jonny out of there as quickly as possible. He leads them around a couple of corners, moving blindly, and then stops to breathe.

Jonny’s next to him, mouth still tight. “That was out of line,” Patrick says.

“ _I_ was out of line?” Jonny says. “What about—”

“You were out of line,” Patrick says. “I don’t need you to yell at my husband’s chamberlain for me.

“Fine,” Jonny says, lips pressing together. Then, after a minute or two of silence, in a quieter voice, “I didn’t realize it was like that.”

Patrick’s stomach flips. “The king is busy,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Jonny gives him a strange look. “Isn’t there?”

“He has a lot going on,” Patrick says. “He doesn’t need to see me immediately.”

“His own husband?” Jonny says, and Patrick feels his expression start to crack.

“Look, it’s just not—like that,” he says, voice as steady as he can manage.

“Like what?” Jonny asks, and Patrick’s breath is hitching, dangerously close to another breakdown. He has a sudden vision of what he could do right now: how he could press his face into Jonny’s chest, let Jonny put his arms around him, and tell him everything. How Gareth doesn’t sleep with him, how they don’t even talk to each other when they’re alone, how he’s starting to feel like Gareth doesn’t want him at all. How much Patrick just wants someone to hold and be held by, and how much he wants that person to be Jonny.

Patrick wants to say all that as much as he wants Jonny’s hands on his bare skin: he wants to open himself up, stop holding all those words inside. But he already cried on Jonny’s shoulder yesterday, about how useless he felt to the kingdom. He can’t do it again today, especially when it means opening up the secrets of his marriage to someone else.

He takes a deep breath, raises his chin. “It’s not a big deal,” he says again. “I’ll just—I’ll talk to him tonight.”

He tries not to show on his face how much that’s a lie. Jonny looks at him like maybe he can see through him, and then he looks away. “Right,” he says. “Will you…would it be okay if Seabs guarded you this afternoon?”

Patrick’s stomach lurches in alarm. _Jonny knows,_ he thinks, _and he doesn’t want…_

That’s ludicrous; Jonny isn’t going to refuse to guard him just because he thinks he’s pathetic. It’s his _job_. If he needs to take the afternoon off, Patrick’s not going to stand in his way. “Of course,” Patrick says, swallowing down the irrational feeling of rejection. “Can I ask why?”

“I have some things I need to do,” Jonny says. He’s not looking at Patrick. “I’ll send a second guard to join Seabs as soon as I can.”

“Sure.” Patrick wants to ask more, but he’s half afraid of the answers. “I’ll be in my chambers.”

***

There’s nothing wrong with Jonny having an afternoon off. He’s allowed to have other things he has to take care of. Other things he remembers suddenly while having an argument with Patrick in a random castle corridor. It’s nothing to worry about.

Seabs and Duncs are both in the guardroom beyond Patrick’s door. Patrick could take one or both of them to the tower, but he doesn’t want to—he’s only ever been there with Jonny. And he’s sure Jonny doesn’t think of it as their private spot or anything like that, but Patrick’s allowed to be stupidly sentimental in the privacy of his thoughts.

Patrick gets up a little earlier than usual the next morning, after not sleeping well. He pulls on his training clothes and prepares himself for the possibility that Jonny won’t be there. He’s not sure what he’ll do in that case, and it underlines what Patrick was thinking earlier: that he’s becoming too dependent on his one guard. His happiness can’t depend on Jonny, not when Jonny could leave at any time.

He opens the door to his guardroom, prepared for the worst, and finds it: Seabs and Sharpy are standing there.

It turns out there was still a lot of hope to be crushed. “No captain?” he asks, aiming for casual.

The way Seabs looks at him makes him think he’s failed, even without looking at the very knowing expression on Sharpy’s face. “He switched shifts for the day.”

Of course he did. “Did he say why?”

“Sorry, kid,” Sharpy says, and yeah, Patrick’s definitely not pulling off the casual thing.

He’s not even surprised when Jonny’s not with the other guards who are waiting in the training room, as they’ve all started to call it. If Jonny was going to show up to train, he wouldn’t have switched his shift.

Patrick leads the training alone. They all know what they’re doing by now: he starts them on exercises, and then he circulates to give corrections alone instead of with Jonny. It’s not that bad; it’s not like he has to watch them all to keep them from stabbing each other. They’ll all get their personal attention eventually. It’s just less fun than it usually is, when he can look up across the room and catch Jonny’s eye and get into debates about the best way to teach something.

They’re just about done, Patrick trying to decide if they have time for another exercise, when Shawzy gives a cheer from near the door. “Hey, look who decided to join us!”

Patrick knows who it’s going to be before he turns around. There’s only one option, really. He braces himself to play it cool, to not expect too much. Jonny will probably be distant—he probably won’t even be looking at Patrick.

He turns around, and Jonny’s coming straight toward him, smiling wide.

Patrick’s heart speeds up. “Patrick,” Jonny says, face lit with excitement. “What are you doing this afternoon?”

What is he doing this afternoon? Is that a trick question? Patrick’s afternoons only ever consist of spending time with Jonny, or lying in his room wishing he were, like yesterday. “No plans,” he says slowly.

“Great,” Jonny says, still smiling that devastating smile. “I have some people I want you to meet.”

***

It turns out Jonny’s set up lunch with a couple of the young noblemen in the capital. “What?” Patrick says blankly when Jonny tells him.

“They’re coming here, to meet you,” Jonny says. Then, some of the excitement in his face giving way to hesitation, “You did want that, didn’t you? I mean…”

“No, I do, I just.” He just doesn’t know where this is coming from.

“I thought I’d see if I could get in touch with them, after—well.” Jonny’s face darkens momentarily. “I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure if they’d be free, but they practically asked me before I could ask them. They’re all really curious about you.” Then, seeing the expression on Patrick’s face, “What?”

“Nothing.” Patrick’s not sure what his face is doing, but he’s sure it’s embarrassing. He can’t quite believe Jonny did this for him, just because he felt bad about Patrick being snubbed. Whatever Patrick thought Jonny was doing yesterday—it wasn’t this at all.

He tries to wipe the stupid grin off his face. “It’s really great,” he says. “I’m really glad you did this.”

“They’re going to like you so much,” Jonny says, and Patrick can’t tell if the butterflies in his stomach are from nerves about meeting the nobles or from the way Jonny’s looking at him right now. Like he believes Patrick can do this. Like he doesn’t have any doubts.

The noblemen Jonny brought are apparently waiting in one of the small dining rooms after Patrick’s washed and changed into his court clothes. There are only two of them—“There are others I can invite later,” Jonny says, but two feels like plenty to Patrick to start with.

“You’re joining us for lunch, right?” he says to Jonny.

“Should I?” Jonny asks. “I mean—”

“You obviously should,” Patrick says. “You’re off duty right now anyway, right?”

Lord Crosby and Sir Oshie bow as Patrick comes in. Patrick’s not used to being this nervous, meeting nobles. He outranks them; he’s known hundreds of them in his life. But he feels there’s more riding on this meeting than most. There _shouldn’t_ be—Patrick’s parents would be so disappointed if they knew he had taken this long to make any good connections with nobles who weren’t in his guard—but this is a chance to make up for lost time.

Plus, these are the guys Jonny wanted him to meet. That makes them mean more, in Patrick’s book.

Crosby and Oshie are okay, though. Crosby—“Call me Sid,” he says right away, expression earnest—is cut from the same cloth as Jonny, the serious-minded heir to a major house, but he’s much nicer to Patrick than Jonny was at their first meeting. “Jonny tells me you had some good ideas about crop redistribution,” he says, looking at Patrick like he’s really interested in his thoughts.

It’s like waking up a limb that’s been asleep. Patrick’s been here for long enough that he’s almost forgotten what it’s like to have people take his ideas seriously. He hadn’t quite realized until now, when Crosby and Oshie listen to him talk without smiling patronizingly even once.

Oshie is a little more obnoxious in his first impression than Crosby. “You could call me T.J., but you should probably call me Oshie. Everyone does,” he says, dropping a wink, and Patrick makes an automatic face, but he doesn’t really dislike the guy. The obnoxiousness feels almost familiar, like this is how Oshie behaves around people he’s friends with.

“So, Patrick, you any good on a horse?” Oshie asks.

“Of course he is,” Jonny says before Patrick can answer. “Didn’t you hear about the hunting party at Anders’ estate? You know the horse they gave to Lord Kesler last year—the mare, what was her name?”

“Bootsy,” Patrick says, shooting Jonny an alarmed glance. He’s not going to tell the story of the forest chase, is he?

“You should have seen Patrick handle her,” Jonny says. “You remember how Kesler ended up shouting at her half the day?”

“Do I ever,” Oshie says. “His father looked like he wanted to pull a branch down and beat him with it.”

Patrick had no idea that was even a concern. No one said anything to him on the hunt. “I didn’t think she was that tough.”

“That’s because you have good hands,” Jonny says, like it’s obvious. Then, to the others, “You should see him with a sword.”

“Good?” Sid asks.

“Beat me a couple of times,” Jonny says. His tone manages to be warm and grudging at the same time.

Patrick’s sure his cheeks are pink as he grins at Jonny. “More than a couple.”

“Seriously? This guy take you down a couple of pegs?” Oshie says, delighted, slapping Jonny on the arm. “About time.”

“Do you have thoughts on sword instruction, then?” Sid asks Patrick.

“ _Do_ I,” Patrick says.

They talk for a couple of hours, long after the food is gone. It turns out Sid has just gotten a new group of guards at his estate and is thinking about training methodology. Then they hear about the problems Oshie’s father is having with his farmers, the challenges of encouraging them to keep fields fallow in a lean year like the past one, the particular incentives Rangeland has been in the habit of offering. It’s information Patrick had almost stopped trying to absorb at royal dinners, because no one ever talks to him about it directly or seems interested in his opinion. It’s exhilarating. 

He’s grinning when they all rise to leave. “You’ll have to come riding with me soon,” Sid says as they shake hands. “I’m not much with a sword, but I have a few horses I’d love to see you try your hand at.”

“Count me in,” Oshie says. “Taze, you joining us?”

“If I can get permission from the prince consort,” Jonny says, and the way he looks at Patrick—Patrick doesn’t even know why he’s smiling so hard, but he can’t stop.

“That was amazing,” he says twenty minutes later, when he and Jonny are in the tower room. Jonny told Duncs to take the afternoon off, since he’d had him do an extra half-shift that morning. He and Jonny are theoretically sitting down to talk about who else Jonny knows that Patrick should meet, but Patrick can’t sit still—he’s walking back and forth, snapping his fingers. “Seriously, that was so, so amazing.”

“I should have done it sooner,” Jonny says. He’s grinning, too, though at least he’s managing to stand still. “I should have realized—”

“Are you kidding?” Patrick says. “That was—Jonny. That would never have happened without you. I can’t thank you enough for—I mean, just setting it up was enough, but also—” Pulling Patrick into their easy camaraderie. Praising Patrick’s swordsmanship, his riding, his statecraft with so much warmth Patrick can’t think about it without blushing. Things Patrick can’t say out loud if he doesn’t want to make it obvious how he feels. “Seriously,” he says again, ducking his head because he just can’t handle looking at Jonny while there’s this much feeling in him. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“I’d do it again,” Jonny says. “I’d do it—Patrick. I’d do it a hundred times.”

The words aren’t that out of the ordinary, but the way he says them—Patrick looks back at Jonny, startled.

Jonny’s eyes are dark and focused on him. It feels like being struck with a sword. “I would do so much more than this,” Jonny says. “You deserve so much more than this.”

Patrick’s heart is going to beat its way out of his chest. “Jonny.”

Jonny looks away. “Sorry. I—sorry.”

“No, it’s just—”

Jonny’s stepping away from him, putting space between them. Patrick doesn’t want space. He wants—today Jonny gave him exactly what he didn’t know how to ask for, looked at Patrick like he was the best thing in the universe, and Patrick can’t bear to see him take any of it back. “ _Jonny_ ,” he says, a desperate plea.

Jonny’s eyes snap back to his. There’s a moment where they hold each other’s gaze, and then Jonny’s eyes drop to his mouth, and he takes three steps forward and puts his hands on Patrick’s face and kisses him.

Patrick gasps into the kiss. Jonny’s mouth is—it’s so much softer and warmer than Patrick could have imagined, and for a second he’s panicked because he doesn’t know how to do this. He’s never kissed like this. Then Jonny’s tongue curls against his and there’s nothing more to think about, just the nearness and heat and stomach-dropping slide of Jonny’s tongue into his mouth.

It’s the closeness that hits Patrick the hardest. Yesterday he was frozen with need at just Jonny’s hand in his hair, and now Jonny’s whole body is pressed against his, in his hands, in his arms. Patrick makes a sound, and Jonny’s breath catches, a little whimper, and the sound flies down into Patrick’s gut and starts a fire there.

God. He can’t—Jonny’s mouth on his is stealing his ability to breathe, to think. Patrick’s been fighting the desire for so many days, and all he can do is push into it and try to get as much as he can. He might be embarrassed about it if Jonny weren’t pushing back just as hard, kissing him fast and desperate like it’s the only chance he’ll have.

It might be the only chance they’ll have. No—he pushes that thought down. Ignores it. Lets Jonny’s tongue burn it away.

Jonny’s in his arms now; nothing else matters. Patrick’s skin is igniting where they touch. Their mouths finally break apart an inch, both of them gasping for air, and Jonny’s mouth travels down the line of Patrick’s jaw and makes Patrick’s knees go weak. He gives a cry and Jonny’s hand is there, strong in the middle of his back.

The end up against the nearest wall, Jonny pushing Patrick against it while he kisses him, and it’s even better that way. Jonny crowds him the way he would a dueling opponent he was trying to grapple—the way he did the other week, except this time Patrick’s trying to pull him closer, not push him away. This time when Jonny slides a thigh between his legs, Patrick pushes into it.

Patrick gasps as Jonny’s thigh presses against his swollen cock. It’s the thing Patrick was afraid of happening weeks ago, and now it sends blinding pleasure through him. He slides his hands around to Jonny’s ass, that roundness that was outlined by the clinging wetness of his pants in the stream—so different from how Patrick imagined it feeling, so much better—and pulls Jonny in, grinding his cock against Jonny’s thigh and Jonny’s against his stomach.

“Patrick, Patrick,” Jonny gasps into his hair, rolling his hips again. The bulge of Jonny’s cock against Patrick’s abs is making him desperate for release. But he doesn’t want this to end. He’s rolling down a slope, not even trying to stop himself anymore, and he wants to go as far down as this slope goes. All the way, to where the ache lives way down deep within him.

“Jonny,” he says, tugging at Jonny’s shirt. “Can you—”

Jonny pulls the shirt over his head. All his layers come off together, so that it’s only his bare skin under Patrick’s hands. Patrick is frozen for a moment at how much it is: the heat of Jonny’s skin, so recently covered, the firm outlines of his pecs and the dark buds of his nipples.

He moves a hand up, slowly, to touch one of the nipples. Jonny makes a strangled sound, and Patrick puts his mouth on the smooth muscle of his shoulder to bite while he rubs his thumb over the nipple, back and forth, feeling it get hot and swollen under his touch.

“Fuck, fuck.” Jonny’s mouthing at the side of Patrick’s neck, his mouth urgent, and Patrick lifts his head to kiss him again.

The whole world has felt off-kilter for the past few months. Patrick didn’t know all it would need for it to tilt back onto the right axis was Jonny’s mouth on his.

Jonny pulls Patrick’s shirt off and runs his hands up his sides so that Patrick shivers and tips his head back. Jonny’s tongue laves the front of his throat while his hands go to the lacings at the front of Patrick’s pants.

Patrick was so nervous about this part when he thought about his wedding night. The gut-level shyness of someone taking his clothes off and _seeing_ him, nothing protective in place—and now that it’s happening he’s so turned on he just wants it to happen faster. He _wants_ Jonny’s eyes on him, taking in the jut of his cock, and he doesn’t realize until he sees the hungry look in Jonny’s eyes that there was a still a part of him that was nervous that it wouldn’t be there. But Jonny takes him in, full, flushed, hard, and there’s nothing in his eyes but want. He sinks to his knees and sucks one of Patrick’s balls into his mouth.

Patrick keens. It’s dangerous to get too loud—but no one ever comes up to this part of the tower; there’s no one in the world but him and Jonny. Jonny who’s on his knees in front of him, the gentle movements of his tongue on Patrick’s balls making Patrick want to die.

“Jonny.” His hands are in Jonny’s hair. Patrick doesn’t even know how they got there. “ _Jonny._ ”

Jonny moans, shooting sparks throughout Patrick’s groin, and runs his fingers down his ass.

Patrick feels like he’s going to explode. There’s an insistent throb in his groin, in his cock and balls, traveling up into his chest and down into his thighs. It’s echoed by something deeper: a tight clench of emptiness, an itch he doesn’t know how to scratch alone.

Jonny squeezes his ass and pulls apart the cheeks. His fingers edge toward the center, toward that little bud that’s already clenching rhythmically as if to suck something inside. “Can I—”

He looks wrecked. His cheeks are flushed, his hair a mess, his eyes wild when they meet Patrick’s. Patrick closes his own so that he doesn’t come right there. “ _Yes._ ”

The next thing he knows Jonny’s mouth is on his, Jonny standing and pressing him back against the cold stone of the wall as he kisses him hungrily. Patrick jerks his hips up to meet the circling motion of Jonny’s as they both leave streaks of precome on each other’s stomach. Patrick’s going to go crazy. His toes and fingers are going to burst apart, his body dissolving from the outside in.

An image flashes into his mind, something he’s forgotten. A little container he’s been keeping next to his bed since Kanedom. “Jonny,” he says, pulling back just enough so that his words aren’t lost against Jonny’s mouth. “We don’t have—um. If you’re going to—we need—”

“Oh.” Jonny’s finger inches back down between his cheeks and presses on his hole. Patrick’s eyelids flutter shut. “I—oh. I think I have something.”

It’s in a pocket of his discarded tunic, a little metal cannister of muscle rub that Patrick’s smelled faintly on Jonny when they’ve fenced sometimes. Jonny rubs it on his fingers once Patrick’s spread out on the floor, lying on their tunics and vibrating deep down inside himself whenever he looks at Jonny’s thick red cock jutting up between his legs. The first brush of Jonny’s slick fingers on his hole is distracting—and then Jonny’s mouth is on his chest, licking between his pecs and over his nipples. Patrick shivers and pushes into the touch, then into the strange intrusion of Jonny’s finger, weird at first, then turning slowly into something he wants more of, something that’s making him pant and beg.

“Sh, sh, I will,” Jonny says, his fingers spreading out inside of Patrick and making his eyes cross. He looks at Jonny—at the focus in his eyes, the intensity in the familiar beloved lines of his face, and he’s overwhelmed by the thought that he’s getting to have this, just this once, that he—

Jonny must see it in his face, because as soon as he looks up he’s climbing into Patrick’s arms, kissing him. The skin of his back hot under Patrick’s hands, all of him there for Patrick to touch, the bump of his cock against Patrick’s like an offering.

“Go, um, go slow,” Patrick says as Jonny lines his cock up for entry. Jonny’s cock looks so big; he can’t quite imagine how it will fit, and he can feel his muscles tightening with nerves. Jonny probably doesn’t know he hasn’t done this before. But Jonny hums his agreement, and kisses Patrick while he guides himself in.

The first push of Jonny’s cock into his hole doesn’t feel slow. Patrick cries out, the pain of the stretch overwhelming the pleasure for long moments, and Jonny murmurs against his cheek. “Do you want me to—”

“No, just.” Patrick breathes deep and tries to relax. “Yeah, okay, you can, just a little—”

It seems to take forever before Jonny’s cock seated within him, and by then Patrick’s forgotten he was afraid of this and has started to sweat. “Oh God, you’re inside me,” he says, the knowledge of it crashing into him over and over again.

Jonny’s face is white and strained above him. “Can I.”

“ _Please_ ,” Patrick says, and Jonny whines like he’s been hit and jerks a little bit out and then in again.

The jerk changes the angle. Patrick arches into it and shouts as something inside of him lights up in rainbow colors behind his eyelids.

Jonny’s cock thrusts into him in blinding bursts. Patrick keeps wanting to close his eyes from how good it feels, but he keeps them open because he wants to see Jonny working above him. Jonny’s face is flushed and shocked, sweat prickling his hairline, his eyes startlingly present on Patrick’s. Patrick’s not sure which feels like more: the slide of Jonny’s cock deep within him, or the visible evidence of pleasure on Jonny’s face as he focuses his eyes on Patrick’s. 

Patrick wants more. He wants Jonny’s mouth on his again. He wants Jonny to be inside him further. He wants their bodies to dissolve so they aren’t two people anymore but one, no Jonny and no Patrick, just them, apart from the world and immune from anything it can do to them. This, right here, Jonny’s startled eyes on Patrick’s, this is reality. Everything else pales in comparison to it.

Tears are trickling from the corners of his eyes, running down his temples. Jonny leans forward and kisses them away, kisses Patrick’s mouth, sucks on his tongue. Patrick moans and Jonny’s right there with him, the vibrations echoing in both of their bodies. “Jonny, I,” Patrick says, not even sure how he’s going to go on. He can’t go on, after this.

“Yes,” Jonny says, as his mouth falls open, and his eyes roll back into his head, and he pours himself deep into Patrick’s body.

Patrick is gone. Patrick is lost. Patrick’s body is slipping away into pleasure, into the mind-blowing fullness of this hard swollen length pressing inside of him, into being one with Jonny.

***

After, they lie curled up with their foreheads pressed together, letting their breathing gradually slow.

Jonny’s hand is clenched tight on Patrick’s. Patrick thinks it’s Jonny doing the clenching, but he’s not really sure, because if Jonny weren’t doing it, Patrick definitely would. He feels like he needs to hold Jonny impossibly close to him right now. If he doesn’t, other things will creep in between them. They’re already creeping in. He opens his eyes, pulls back a couple of inches, so that the sight of Jonny will keep everything else away.

Jonny’s eyes are already open and looking at him. His free hand comes up and touches the line of Patrick’s cheek. “You’re perfect,” he whispers.

The words land like snowflakes on Patrick’s eyelids, almost-invisible pressure that leaves everything different underneath them. “I’ve wanted you ever since the hunting trip,” he says, and it feels like he’s scooping out a bit of his insides and placing it in Jonny’s hands.

Jonny laughs, a gentle sound. “I’ve got you beat,” he says. “I’ve wanted you since the first time we fought.”

That can’t be true. “That was barely a week after we met.”

“No,” Jonny says, and Patrick’s opening his mouth to disagree, because it definitely was, but Jonny says, “Not the first time we fenced. The first time we argued.”

“That…was the first day,” Patrick says.

The curve of Jonny’s mouth is rueful. “Why do you think I was so snippy to you?” he says. “You were…” He traces his fingers along the curve of Patrick’s cheekbone again, lets them brush the corner of his mouth. “You were impossible not to want.”

Patrick sucks in a breath. That was so early—they could have had so much more time. If only Jonny had said something sooner. But he wouldn’t have, of course. And they can’t have more time. Even this time is stolen.

“Jonny,” Patrick says. The sweat on his skin is turning cool. “Jonny.”

He doesn’t have to say anything more than that. They both know the truth. He can see on Jonny’s face that he hadn’t forgotten. They’ve both been holding off the knowledge as long as possible, a door that’s slowly and inexorably closing.

Jonny’s hand loosens in Patrick’s grasp. Patrick’s grasp. Patrick holds tighter, and Jonny grips back, but his face is resigned. “We shouldn’t have done this,” he says.

“We were always going to.” If it had just been Patrick—but if Jonny felt the same, if it was an unbearable pressure on him like it was on Patrick, there was no way they weren’t going to give in to it. “It was—Jonny, it was—”

“I know,” Jonny says, and they’re kissing again, Patrick letting himself get lost in Jonny’s mouth for just another few moments. He won’t be able to feel like this for long. The threads connecting him to Jonny will snap, and he won’t be able to find them again.

The problem is, this isn’t all he wants. He doesn’t just want stolen minutes of pleasure on the floor of their tower room, Jonny’s cock driving into him, or even Jonny holding him afterward. He wants to hold him always. He wants to kiss him in public and debate land rights and turn in court to see Jonny looking at him with his eyes bright and focused. All the things he can’t have when there are two kingdoms depending on him for peace.

Their mouths finally separate again. Jonny’s hand is still tight on his. “I’ll change my shift,” Jonny says, and Patrick’s stomach clenches, final.

“God,” he says, the word coming out more bitter than he expected. “If we were just…”

“Neither of us was ever going to be free to marry who we wanted,” Jonny says, and it’s true. His father is the biggest single landowner in Rangeland. Patrick was born prince of Kanedom. Both of them were always going to have to marry for political reasons. But Patrick always hoped that when he did marry, it would at least be—

He shuts away those thoughts for now. Jonny is here now, for just these few minutes, his body still pressed to Patrick’s. “If I could…”

“Me, too.” Jonny’s eyes are sad and so, so beautiful. Did Patrick ever properly appreciate them before? How is it fair that they look this good at the moment Patrick has to turn away from them? “We would have had such a good marriage,” Jonny says, and Patrick has to choke down a laugh, because he’s right; he’s so right.

They get up and put on their clothes slowly, moving stiffly. Patrick feels something trickling from his ass, and he’s sure they smell disgusting, but he doesn’t want to say anything about it. If they’d had sex under other circumstances, if there was a chance of a repeat, they could joke about it—but not now. Better not to talk about it.

Finally their clothes are all on and there’s no reason left to delay. Patrick and Jonny hover near the exit from the room. Jonny opens his arms, and Patrick walks into to them.

It’s hard to try to get everything he wants to out of one last embrace. Patrick wants to commit everything to memory, somehow get enough to power him through the next—however many years. But all he can do is breathe in Jonny’s scent and try to hold himself together. “We probably shouldn’t see each other,” he says. “It would be too easy to—”

“Yeah.” Jonny presses a kiss to the side of Patrick’s head. Too easy to slip, to get caught, to destroy everything Patrick promised his parents he’d do. Patrick turns his head, and they kiss again: hard and intense, tinged with the desperation that wasn’t there in their post-coital kiss a few minutes ago. This is really it: the very last time.

Patrick’s breath is shuddering out of him when he pulls back. He rests his forehead against Jonny’s. “Let’s—”

“Yeah,” Jonny says again. And they step through into the outside world.

***

The impact hits Patrick slowly. He’s numb while he gets ready for dinner, washing himself mechanically in the extra bath he has the servants draw him. He doesn’t linger when he washes his hole, just gets himself clean as quickly as possible. He feels like he’s been wounded, a gash opened in his gut, his body in shock but slowly registering the pain. There’s nothing he can do except watch it happen.

It’s hard to eat at dinner. Fortunately, no one really notices. Gareth makes a little conversation with him like he usually does, small talk, but he doesn’t seem to pick up on the fact that Patrick’s answers are terser than they’d normally be. Patrick’s not even sure what the questions are. The other nobles at the table don’t talk to Patrick at all.

There aren’t any musicians tonight. It means Patrick gets to go back to his rooms sooner, go through the whole ritual where he waits blankly in Gareth’s room for a few minutes until the servants are gone, pretending like Gareth wants to touch him. He doesn’t know what he’d do tonight if Gareth actually tried. But he doesn’t, of course, and Patrick gets to go into his own bedroom and slide into his bed and curl up on his side with his knees hugged tight to his chest.

It doesn’t help. He feels all the same things he has all evening. There aren’t even thoughts to go with the pain, really, just the blank animal pain of screaming nerves. Everything hurts: his head, his throat, his chest. Every breath is an effort.

If Jonny’s hands were on him—

Patrick buries his face in his pillow and clenches his eyes shut and holds on until the pain finally fades into sleep.

***

Duncs is waiting with Seabs in the guardroom outside Patrick’s chambers the next morning. Patrick knew Jonny wasn’t going to be there, but it still feels like a blow. “So, we training with the others?” he says, aiming for as normal a voice as possible.

There’s a brief pause. Duncs and Seabs exchange a glance. They obviously know something—not the whole story, Patrick assumes, but they’re not stupid enough to think nothing’s up. He wonders what Jonny said when he told them about the shift change. No. He doesn’t wonder anything.

“Sure, as long as you’re up for it,” Duncs says.

Jonny isn’t at the training session. Obviously. Shawzy is the only one to say something: “Hey, where’s Captain Tazer?” he asks loudly when Patrick’s about to start demonstrating a lunge.

Patrick freezes, no words coming to him—but Hartsy saves him. “Didn’t you hear? Had to switch to the overnight shift. New duties, or something.”

“Oh, bummer,” Hartsy says, and that’s the end of that. Like Jonny’s role on on the squad can so easily be shifted, with just a few words.

Patrick forces his jaw to unlock and goes back to demonstrating.

The first day is the hardest. That’s what he thinks, as he drags through the long hours of the afternoon in the library, staring at a page without seeing it. But then the next day is worse—the next day no one asks about Jonny, and Patrick can’t feel the soreness in his ass anymore, and that’s somehow worse, as if all the ways Jonny has touched his life have disappeard. He wants so badly to hear someone say his name. He knows he shouldn’t bring him up himself, knows he won’t be able to play it cool, but he wants to anyway. Is on the verge of saying something about it at least twenty times that day.

He keeps wondering if maybe they were wrong about needing to stay apart. Gareth isn’t sleeping with Patrick; would he care that much if Patrick were sleeping with someone else? Then he thinks about the look on his father’s face when he first brought up the possibility of Patrick marrying, the hopeful way he talked about the possibility of a peace treaty, sparing them all a war they’d spent the last three years dreading—and he knows that if there’s any chance he could bring that all crashing down, he can’t take it.

He has to—he has to make this marriage good. That’s still his duty. That hasn’t changed, just because the thought of it makes him want to curl up on the floor and sob.

So maybe he doesn’t start by trying to sleep with Gareth again. Patrick can’t even think about anything related to sex right now—doesn’t even want to jerk off, because Jonny immediately appears behind his eyelids. But there are other things he can do, like asking Gareth again about sitting in on King’s Council meetings, or taking Sid and Oshie up on their offer of going riding.

The riding is more successful than the visit to Gareth. Gareth is out again the next two times he tries, and he still shuts down attempts to talk about governance during dinner. But Sid and Oshie take him out to Sid’s family’s land to the north of the city, and the three of them gallop until Patrick almost doesn’t have the breath to be sad.

“No Taze?” Oshie asks when Patrick first shows up, with Sharpy and Shawzy, but Patrick just makes some excuse, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem. The three of them get along just fine, and when Patrick’s leaving, Sid suggests inviting a couple of his other friends next time. “I know Sir Malkin and Lady Kessel would love to meet you,” Sid says, and this is just what Patrick was hoping for: a network of connections in Rangeland, one he could build and grow over the years of his life here. If only he could be as excited about it as he was when Jonny was the one helping him build it.

Oshie rides with Patrick in the carriage back to Madison-on-Range. At first he’s talkative, but Patrick’s fading a little, the dullness creeping back as the exertion of the ride wears off. The conversation peters out until they’re closer to the city, when Oshie says, in a different kind of voice, “Hey.”

Patrick looks up, startled; he’s fallen into a bit of a trance, staring out the window and letting his mind go blank. “Hm?”

“Just wondering, is everything okay with Jonny?” Oshie says. Then, before Patrick can panic: “I know it’s not my place to ask, but he didn’t return a message I sent him, and when he didn’t show up today…I just wanted to make sure.”

“Oh,” Patrick says, trying to sound like this is a normal question to him and not a knife digging into an open wound. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure he’s okay. He had to change his regular shift, so I haven’t seen him as much. You said—he didn’t respond to a message?”

“Eh, I’m sure he’s just busy guarding or whatever,” Oshie says, waving a hand. “Bummer about his shift, though. Seemed like you two were getting along pretty well.”

Was that suggestive? Does Oshie know something? Patrick feels like his heartbeat must be audible across the carriage. He hates this. “Yeah, he’s great,” he says, managing to get the words out without stumbling all over them.

That’s the closest Patrick comes to having to talk about it. The rest of the time, it’s fine: Patrick has a job to do here, and he’s focusing on it. He’s getting to know the nobles, hearing their perspectives on the kingdom. He knows that Oshie wants the river tolls dropped and Sid thinks that’s taking too strong a line on it. He knows there’s a bandit problem to the southeast that’s threatening trade with Tampa. He knows that the farmers to the north of Sid’s lands are worried about wild animals eating the crops now that hunting has died down in favor of logging, which is heavily encouraged by the crown because the provinces to the south have an expanding population and need wood. All these little pieces, starting to add up to knowledge of the kingdom. Patrick doesn’t kid himself that he has a full understanding of any of this, but he’s starting to think he won’t be totally lost when he finally has a chance to contribute to the work of the council.

He manages to track down Gareth a couple of days later. He asks the chamberlain when Gareth will have a minute to talk to him, and then he sits in the antechamber until the time arrives, even though it’s four hours from now and the chamberlain tells him five times that he can have someone fetch him when the king is ready.

Gareth has him come in two hours sooner than promised, probably because the various officials and nobles showing up for other meetings thought it looked a little strange to have the prince consort sitting outside the king’s office all afternoon. “Patrick,” Gareth says. “How can I help you?”

His smile is warm. Patrick feels his shoulders relax a little. There’s almost no one else in the room, only Gareth’s guards and Patrick’s, and Patrick thought maybe it would be like when they’re alone at night—but no: Gareth is looking at him attentively.

“I wanted to talk to you about my joining council meetings,” Patrick says.

The smile fades from Gareth’s face. “I thought we’d agreed you would wait for that.”

“I have waited,” Patrick says, a little too harshly, and makes himself stop and breathe deep. He doesn’t want to risk sounding like a bratty kid. “I’ve spent a lot of time settling in,” he says in a more measured tone. “I think it’s time for me to get involved in the kingdom’s governance.”

“That’s an admirable goal,” Gareth says. “And I wish I had better news for you.”

Patrick’s stomach drops a little. He’s not going to let this go, though; he’d resolved to push on it. “What do you mean?”

“I did bring it up with the council, several weeks ago,” Gareth says. “I was hoping you no longer wanted to join us and it wouldn’t be a problem, but unfortunately, they expressed reservations.”

“Reservations? On what grounds?” Patrick asks. His heart is racing. It can’t be about his training; he was raised for this. If it’s his loyalty—he’s going to be spending the rest of his life in Rangeland. He’s already signed his whole self away. What more can they want?

“The king’s consort has not traditionally been involved in governance,” Gareth says. “There was discussion of making an exception for you, but given the unrest to the north and the general tensions in the kingdom right now…the council decided it wasn’t a good time for it.”

Patrick didn’t even know about the unrest to the north. He was an idiot to think he was coming to understand the kingdom. “So it’s temporary.”

“The council voted last week,” Gareth says, sympathy in his eyes.

Patrick’s lungs feel like they’re collapsing in his chest. He was counting on this:a way to move forward, to start laying roots in this new kingdom and contribute something real. “What am I supposed to _do,_ then?”

The question comes out too honest. He didn’t mean to let that much of his frustration show. Gareth doesn’t look perturbed, though. “The consort’s position is traditionally a social one,” Gareth says. “I should have some free time opening up in my schedule soon. Would you like me to take you around to meet some of the nobles?”

There’s a patronizing note to it—like Gareth’s offering him a day at the seashore as a treat. Patrick knows he’s probably reading too much into it, that he’s annoyed and not thinking clearly, but—

“Yes,” he manages to say, through clenched teeth. “That would be great.”

He’s shaking a little as he leaves Gareth’s office, from some mix of rage and helplessness that he doesn’t even understand right now. Shawzy and Hartsy fall into step after him. They don’t say anything; Patrick doesn’t want them to. He can’t deal with anyone right now, not if he needs to be polite to them, pull a veil over his emotions. The only person he can imagine talking to right now is—

He has to stop walking for a minute, the emotional punch to his gut is so strong. Shawzy and Hartsy manage to stop in time to avoid walking into him. Patrick has no idea what they’re thinking; he can barely see anything, closing his eyes and just breathing through the wave of dizziness that takes him.

He hears Shawzy and Hartsy whisper about something behind him. “Uh, your highness?” Hartsy says finally. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” Patrick opens his eyes. He can do this; he doesn’t need to freak out his guard. “Just having a moment.”

He goes back to his rooms, because he can’t imagine being around people right now; it’s something he’s been doing a lot lately. He just wrote a letter to his family yesterday, but he pulls out his paper and ink anyway.

He’s angry enough that he almost tells them the whole truth. He’s been pretty selective in what he’s told them so far; he wouldn’t say he’s outright lied, but he hasn’t been saying anything about the boredom, or the feelings of uselessness, or just how little he gets to see Gareth. He doesn’t want to worry them, especially when it was probably going to improve soon enough anyway. Now, though—it’s starting to look like nothing will be changing anytime soon. Maybe he _should_ tell them.

Maybe he should tell them about Jonny.

Patrick grits his teeth and waits for that wave of pain to travel through him. He can’t put that on paper; he has no idea how secure the postal system is in Rangeland, and even the most carefully guarded letter can go astray. There’s no way to tell his family about Jonny without putting at risk everything he was trying to do with his marriage. But he _wants_ to. He wants to tell someone; he wants to stop holding it all inside, fighting to keep the burning pressure back from his eyelids.

There’s no one he’s close enough to in Rangeland to tell, though. Not his other guards, not Oshie, not Sid. There was only one person, and Patrick can’t see him anymore.

He writes a letter to his family anyway: a cheery one, or as cheery as he can make it, about the logging industry problems Sid was telling him about the other day. He tries to make it sound like something he just learned about, like he’s been talking to people, like he’s not sitting alone in his room feeling the walls cut him off from the rest of the world.

It’s not like he doesn’t have anything to do at all. Sid’s invited him for another riding party in a few days, and Patrick will get to meet the friends he talked about. Patrick will just have to focus on that: on building his network informally. He knows enough about power to know that knowledge and connections are nine-tenths of it. If Patrick gets to know enough of the important people—Gareth and the council will have to reconsider eventually. A vote can always be changed.

He might have jinxed himself with his excuse to Oshie in the carriage the other day, though, because he does start feeling under the weather the next day. It’s just achiness at first, and it takes him a while to distinguish it from the pain he’s been carrying in his chest for days anyway. But he does notice his own slowness when he’s fencing with the guards. He’s not hungry for lunch afterward, even though he’s always hungry after a training session; he feels…kind of queasy. Like the food he didn’t eat is sitting badly in his stomach.

By the time he’s dressing for dinner, his head has started to throb dully and his stomach is lurching uneasily, like he’s standing on the deck of a ship in Kane Harbor. It’s a struggle to stand quietly while the servants fix his coat, but he does it, and then he just has to sit at dinner and move his food around on his plate and try not to smell anything. And then, it turns out, he has to dance.

Patrick doesn’t even register the sound of the music at first. He’s focused on fighting the way his head has grown heavy, on not letting it nod and drop into the pudding. All he can think is that the high notes are really loud—do they have to be that loud?—and then Gareth is offering him his hand and oh no they have to open the dancing.

Patrick’s never much of a dancer even when he’s feeling fine; he’s had enough lessons not to embarrass himself, but he’s much better with a sword in his hand. Now he can feel the way he’s reacting a few moments too late to every movement Gareth makes. Gareth’s annoyance is obvious in the way he starts pulling and pushing a little harder. Patrick lets him; he doesn’t have the strength to resist. It only hurts a little more than standing still anyway.

When that dance is over, he has to dance with the minister of justice’s wife.

He starts losing track of his partners after a while. The room has gotten really cold; has it always been this cold? Patrick’s shivering as he moves, cold sweat springing up on the back of his neck. These dances really have too much twirling in them.

“Your highness.” It’s a voice he knows: the ambassador to Kanedom. “I want to commend you on the impression you’ve been making so far. Everyone seems quite taken with you.”

Patrick tries to focus on his face. It keeps swimming in and out of focus. The musicians seem to have stopped playing. Maybe they’re done.

“I want to remind you that you can always call on me if you have the slightest concern,” the ambassador says. “If you ever hear any information that makes you uneasy, or are approached by anyone with unsavory intentions…”

Patrick’s concerned he’s going to fall down. He puts a hand onto the table next to him.

“Is your highness all right?” the ambassador asks, and the floor isn’t where it was a moment ago.

“Your highness!” someone shouts, and new hands are on him, uncomfortable touches that Patrick tries to shy away from. “Your majesty, I don’t think the prince consort is well,” a voice says—a voice Patrick knows. Sharpy.

“Take him to his rooms,” Gareth is saying, and then arms are around him again. He wants them to leave him on the floor; it was so much more comfortable. His head is heavy.

“There you go,” someone’s saying. Duncs. Patrick knows him. He’s not as good as Jonny, but he’s still good, and he’ll probably let Patrick lean his head against his shoulder. Will he? Yes. Patrick’s doing it. His head is on Duncs’ shoulder, and it feels so much better like this. So much better than holding it up. It would probably feel even better if Jonny were doing it.

“Jonny,” he mutters, but no one hears him. They’re talking about a doctor. Patrick doesn’t need a doctor. He just needs to lie down, not hold any weight anymore—he’s been holding himself up for so many days, and it’s time to stop—time to—

“Call the doctor right away,” he hears, and then the blackness swallows him.

***

Patrick wakes up a few times to foul-smelling liquids being poured down his throat. He has strange dreams, all that night and the next day: distressing, dim colors and swirling sounds and he knows there’s something he desperately needs to do but he can’t find his way. Strange hands are on him, strange people saying things in worried voices. _We don’t know if he’ll—yes, your majesty, a fever that’s been spreading through the capital—you have to prepare yourself for the possibility that—_

Patrick can’t pull himself out of the haze far enough get to where the voices are. Some of them are familiar, Seabs, maybe, and Sharpy, but he can’t get to them, either. It’s cold where he is, not enough warmth in the world.

His mother used to make him warm when he was sick. She would put her hands on him, on his forehead and his arms, and murmur things that would make him feel better. And his sisters—when he was starting to feel better, or when they were sick, too, they would all get into the same bed, and there would be warmth and a fire in the fireplace and his parents telling them stories. Telling them it would all be better soon.

There’s none of that here. The hands that touch Patrick are efficient, professional. His limbs get lifted and placed back down, his pulse taken by fingers shoved into his neck. The metal of the tools they use is cold and makes him flinch away and cry out.

Then, sometime when it’s dark again, it all changes. There’s a soft hand on his head, stroking his hair away from his face, so gentle it makes Patrick long for things he hasn’t had in a long time. At first it’s blended into a dream, but then reality starts to firm up around him, and Patrick wakes enough to know that the hand on his head is real.

For a moment he thinks it really is his mother, and he wants that so badly it hurts. Then he catches a scent, a scent he recognizes instantly, and the want changes into something else.

It can’t be. Patrick was never going to see him again. But the hand keeps stroking, a light touch that lingers in his hair, like the touch of someone who cares.

Patrick fights against the heaviness of his eyelids. “Jonny?” he whispers, opening his eyes.

Jonny sucks in a breath. His eyes drop down to Patrick’s, full of worry and hope. “Patrick,” he says. “Are you—”

“Don’t stop,” Patrick says, because Jonny’s hand had stilled in his hair. Then he realizes what he’s asking, and his face floods hot. He’s not supposed to ask for anything like this. Jonny shouldn’t even be here. But his hand in Patrick’s hair feels so good, and his eyes are focused on Patrick’s.

Patrick has almost forgotten what it was like to have Jonny’s attention on him. He never wants it to stop.

“We were worried about you for a while there,” Jonny says, and his tone is light, but there’s lingering tension in it that makes Patrick think that for Jonny, at least, the worry was real.

Patrick fumbles a hand out from under the blankets and takes Jonny’s, the one that isn’t in his hair. Maybe this isn’t fair, but oh, well. Life-threatening-illness exception. “I feel like shit,” Patrick says.

It startles a laugh and a hand-squeeze out of Jonny. It’s not even quite true anymore: he doesn’t feel great, true, but he feels better than he has in days. Jonny’s hand is stroking his hair, the other one tight in his own, and Patrick’s floating on the sensation. How could he not feel good?

“They told me to stand watch over you,” Jonny says, a little sheepish, and now Patrick wants to laugh. The one person in Rangeland he would have chosen, and they ask him to stand watch. Patrick wants to ask if they asked him to stroke his head, too, except that he doesn’t want to do anything that might make the stroking stop again. He wants it to last forever.

“How’ve you been?” Patrick asks, only slurring the words a little.

“Oh, I’ve been—good,” Jonny says, a little catch before the last word. Patrick feels guilty for feeling glad about it. He wants Jonny to be happy, obviously, but—he doesn’t want Jonny to have been too happy without him. He doesn’t want to have been alone in this. “Been keeping busy, anyway.”

“Yeah? With what?”

“I’ve been, uh—I’ve been charting troop movements,” Jonny says with a little laugh. “I guess I’ve had a little time on my hands.”

He hasn’t had anyone to fence with. Patrick has a sudden pang—Jonny might never have anyone like him to fence with again. It hits him, all over again, what a waste this is, and he squeezes Jonny’s hand. “Tell me about them,” he says, because he’s too tired to focus, but he wants to hear Jonny’s voice.

“I don’t know the numbers by heart,” Jonny says, snippy, and Patrick laughs, because he’s always the one who remembers the numbers. He remembers Jonny up in the tower, asking Patrick how he could possibly remember the numbers he just cited about Kanedom’s crops. Patrick saying it was easy, they were just numbers, why would he not remember them?

“Tell them to me sometime,” Patrick mumbles. “I’ll remember.”

“Yeah,” Jonny says, sounding fond. Patrick can’t see him anymore; his eyes are shut. “I’ll do that.”

Jonny’s hands are warm in his, warm on his head. Patrick wants to say something else, but the fatigue is dragging him down, deep hooks in the heart of him. “Jonny,” he says, and then loses the thread of what he was going to say. “Jonny. Miss you.”

Jonny sucks in a breath. “ _Patrick._ ” The hand that was in his hair slides down to cup Patrick’s cheek. “I don’t know if I’m going to make it without you,” he says in a low voice.

Patrick turns his head a little so he can press his lips to Jonny’s hand. It’s hard to move, and he doesn’t quite make it, but he gets close enough. “Love you,” he murmurs, and then he’s gone, the fatigue closing over his head.

***

The next morning he wonders if it was a dream. His head feels almost clear for the first time in two days, and it couldn’t have been real, could it? Jonny’s hand stroking the pain away. Jonny’s hand in his like he belonged to him.

The doctor has him sit up and take a few sips of broth. Patrick’s body aches all over. He doesn’t think it was a dream.

He doesn’t see Jonny again, though, and he’s not sick enough to need someone in his room the next few nights. It seems like he had a fever that’s been going around the capital, and it’s killed a few people, but most people are pulling through all right. Patrick’s weak for a couple of days and doesn’t have much appetite. The third day he feels almost normal, and he convinces Seabs and Duncs to let him lead a shortened training session with the guards.

The next morning, he’s throwing up his breakfast, so maybe he overdid it a little—but he can’t just sit around. He’s bored to death. There aren’t that many books he can read in the library that don’t remind him of Jonny. The Wyvern Chronicles are out, and anything with a romantic plot Jonny would laugh at, and also anything about statecraft. He gets over the last one—he can’t exactly stop thinking about statecraft, if he’s going to be a monarch of a kingdom—but dry statecraft reading is also not something you want to do for too many days on end.

He gets a message a couple of days later that proves Jonny’s visit wasn’t a dream. It’s a folded piece of paper with his breakfast tray. Patrick’s excited for a moment, because he thinks it’s a letter from his family—he hasn’t heard from them in over a week, and he’s starting to wonder if there’s unseasonal bad weather in the mountain passes. But it’s not packaged like a letter, just a single sheet folded and sealed with a seal Patrick doesn’t recognize. Then he opens the sheet and sees the _Jonny_ scrawled at the bottom of it and his heart speeds up for a new reason.

_Patrick,_ it says at the top. Just that as a greeting. Then, _I thought you might enjoy these numbers._

Below are rows of numbers with initials next to them. It takes Patrick a few minutes to work out what it means. They’re troop numbers, of course: two thousand here, three thousand there. The initials next to them are the provinces. But even once he works it out, what he’s seeing doesn’t make sense. The provinces on the list are almost all the ones to the west, near the mountains, near the border of Kanedom. It might be an incomplete list—but if that’s the case, then the troop numbers are really high. Higher than Patrick remembers from sitting in on his parents’ council meetings.

He reads through it a few times, adding things up carefully, and then he gets out a fresh piece of paper. His breakfast has gone cold; he would probably just have thrown it up anyway. He doesn’t bother addressing the top of the paper. _You sure you have those figures right?_ he writes. _Because it feels a little lopsided._

He gives the note to Seabs to give to Jonny. He feels self-conscious doing it, like Seabs is going to judge him—but of course Seabs doesn’t know they’re supposed to be avoiding each other. It’s just a note from the prince consort to the chief of his guard, who he doesn’t get to see in person anymore.

Jonny writes back the next day. It’s a short note, like, Patrick’s, unsigned. Patrick tells himself he’s not disappointed by the lack of the scrawled name. _They’re accurate,_ it says. _If you have any explanations, I’d be glad to hear them._

Patrick doesn’t write back right away, only because he doesn’t have an explanation. Or, maybe he does, but all the explanations he can think of are really alarming.

He brings it up that day when he’s out riding with Sid and Oshie and Sid’s friends. He likes the friends so far—Malkin and Kessel are as easy to talk to as the other two, and Kessel reminds Patrick of his sisters—and after lunch he feels comfortable enough to ask, as casually as possible, “Do any of you know anything about troop movements to the west?”

“Oh yeah, my father was ordered to send five thousand men,” Sid says, like it’s a casual thing. “There’s some unrest in the northwest that King Gareth is worried about.”

“What’s the deal with that, though?” Kessel asks. “I keep hearing people around court talking about that, but no one seems to know what the details are.”

“Maybe they’re upset about the tariffs that came from the treaty with Kanedom,” Malkin says, and tariffs are Oshie’s favorite topic, so they get diverted. It seems like no one has any real information on what’s happening in the northwest, anyway.

Patrick thinks about bringing it up to Gareth that night. He’s been very attentive to Patrick since his illness, making sure he’s warm enough and has enough to eat—only at dinner, of course; Patrick doesn’t see him otherwise. Patrick makes an attempt to bring it up, but as soon as he starts talking about the unrest Gareth is very insistent that Patrick not worry about such things. “You need to rest during your recovery,” he says, holding Patrick’s hand in both of his, while the ladies at the table making cooing noises.

Patrick lets it drop.

He’s out in the courtyard the next afternoon when the ambassador from the Isles comes up to him. Patrick hasn’t seen Tavares in weeks; he had a vague idea he was on a tour of the southern provinces. His back goes up a little as soon as the guy makes to come towards him, which isn’t really fair—it’s not like Tavares has actually tried anything. But Patrick gets such a weird vibe off of him.

“I heard about your illness,” Tavares says. His eyes are bugging out at Patrick a little. “I hope you’re feeling better?”

“Yes, thank you, I’m feeling great,” Patrick says, which is true, at the moment. He doesn’t need to mention the thing where he couldn’t keep his breakfast down this morning.

“So glad to hear it,” Tavares says, looking anything but. And then, in a lower voice, “I wonder if I might have a quick word?”

There’s no Kanish ambassador around to extricate Patrick this time. Patrick could shut things down himself—but on the other hand, they’re in an open courtyard, and Duncs and Seabs are standing five feet behind him, and he’s kind of curious about what Tavares has to say.

Tavares takes a seat when Patrick invites him to. “Your highness,” he says, “I hope you’ll forgive me for this.”

Patrick blinks at him. Tavares isn’t leaning very close to him, affecting casualness, but his voice is quiet enough that Patrick can barely hear him. “What is there to forgive?”

“My temerity in warning you,” Tavares says. “Your highness, do you know how the queen died?”

“Illness, I think,” Patrick says. He barely remembers hearing about this; it’s not like people bring her up a lot these days. Mostly all he knows is that she was from the Isles.

“That was the report put around,” Tavares says.

Patrick’s immediately a few notches warier. “But?”

“But it was never confirmed,” Tavares says, which is a bit of an anticlimactic answer. “However, it was already clear at that point that the king was unhappy with her failure to bear a child.”

Patrick’s spent enough time with diplomats to be able to interpret that one. He doesn’t necessarily believe it, though: Gareth doesn’t seem to care enough about conceiving a child to have that be a motive for anything. “That’s a serious implication.”

“As I said.” The ambassador bows his head. “I ask you to forgive my temerity. I thought perhaps…you might appreciate the warning.”

Patrick does, sort of, unless it was given to try to sow dissent in Patrick’s marriage. Gareth can’t want to kill Patrick for the same reason he might have wanted to kill the former queen, because he hasn’t even tried to impregnate Patrick. Gareth probably hasn’t killed anyone and doesn’t want to kill Patrick, either. But there is a slight chance that Tavares took Patrick’s illness as a genuine cause for alarm.

“Thank you,” Patrick says. “I appreciate your taking the risk.”

***

Patrick doesn’t believe it. But there’s just enough of a possibility for him to want to test it.

“Do you think,” he says to Duncs and Seabs when they reach his rooms, “that you could bring me breakfast tomorrow? Nothing fancy,” he adds. “Just whatever you have in the barracks. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention it to anyone.”

There’s the slightest of pauses while they digest this admittedly weird request. “Of course,” Seabs says.

The next morning, Patrick sets aside his tray of eggs and meat and fruit from the kitchens and knocks on the guard door after the morning servant leaves. “Thanks,” Patrick says when Seabs passes him a bowl of porridge.

“Don’t thank him until you’ve eaten it,” Duncs says.

It’s not bad, actually. Patrick feels good immediately after eating it. And fifteen minutes later he’s bent over his chamber pot, throwing it up.

So, he thinks, straightening up and brushing his sweat-slick hair off his forehead. So much for that theory.

Gareth isn’t poisoning him via the kitchens. Patrick supposes there’s a possibility that the guards are poisoning him, too, that everybody’s in on it—but he can’t really bring himself to believe that.

Still, though, it’s weird. He turns it over in his head as he trains with the guards. It’s been a week since he recovered from the serious part of his illness; he would expect himself to still be weak, maybe, but actually he isn’t even that. He feels fine now, doing the normal training exercises he was avoiding until a couple of days ago. It’s only in the mornings that he still—

Hang on.

Patrick stops in the middle of a move, so that Shawzy actually whacks him on the arm before Patrick remembers to move. “Shawzy!” Seabs snaps.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to!” Shawzy says. “He just, like, stopped. Are you okay? Are you dying again?” he asks Patrick.

“No. Sorry.” Patrick’s still a few beats behind. “It was just…” He shakes his head. “I was…”

“Maybe we should call it a morning,” Sharpy says loudly, and Patrick would normally object, but he can’t get it together right now. He can barely follow Seabs and Duncs back to his room. He’s too busy thinking about what just occurred to him, the thing that can’t possibly be true. Can it?

There’s a bath waiting for him, like there always is after training. Patrick gets in mechanically, trying not to touch his body while he pulls his clothes off. He waits until the hot water has enveloped him before he runs his hands over his torso.

It feels normal. He’s lost a little weight this past week, from being so sick for two days and then not able to keep food down in the mornings. But his stomach is still muscled. Still flat.

He presses a hand to it, as if he can feel what’s inside.

He could still be wrong. He’s been sick; maybe it threw off his digestion. But now that the possibility has occurred to him, he can’t get away from it: of course he couldn’t get away with having sex with Jonny even once. Of course it would have the worst result possible.

The water feels too hot. He wants to climb out of it, out of his own body, out of the problem he’s created for himself. He does the first one, pulling himself out of the water with shaky limbs.

It’s only been a few weeks. He probably won’t start showing for…what, three months? Four? That’s how much time he has before Gareth knows, undeniably, that Patrick broke his vows.

He wants to throw up again.

What will Gareth do when he finds out? There’s a chance he wouldn’t have cared about Patrick sleeping with Jonny. Gareth isn’t sleeping with him, after all—he might not mind Patrick ending up in someone else’s bed. But carrying someone else’s child. Introducing a bastard into the line of succession. He’ll know, and there’s no way he won’t care.

Patrick feels a wave of anger. If Gareth didn’t want him to sleep with someone else, he should have slept with him himself. But that doesn’t really matter, in the end. Whether or not it’s fair for Gareth to be mad, it will still cause a ripple of unrest across the two countries. It will shake apart the delicate peace treaty. Patrick’s people might have to go to war, fight against all those troops massed in the west, just because Patrick couldn’t keep it in his pants.

He definitely can’t imagine eating lunch right now. He curls up on his bed and closes his eyes against the world.

***

It’s a dinner that he realizes the obvious solution.

Patrick’s sitting next to Gareth, jumping every time Gareth looks at him, because it feels like Gareth will see it on him. How Patrick was untrue, how he committed treason—and then it occurs to him, in a blinding burst that should have hit him hours ago, that Gareth never has to find out what Patrick did. Gareth just has to think it’s his own child.

Patrick’s hands clench tight on his silverware. He hasn’t succeeded at sleeping with Gareth yet, but honestly, he hasn’t tried that hard. He never really wanted to sleep with Gareth—not like he wanted to sleep with Jonny, desire burning like fire in every vein. If he pushes for it now, he can probably make it happen. And the sooner the better.

It’s a small dinner tonight, no dancing; Patrick doesn’t know if that makes it easier or harder. At least it means they won’t be as tired when they go to bed.

Patrick makes sure to lean into the hand Gareth places on his back as they head to their rooms. “So, I’ve been feeling better for a week or so now,” he says while Gareth undoes his outer garments over by the wardrobe. It’s the first time he’s tried speaking in a while, when they’ve been in Gareth’s room at night.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Gareth says. It doesn’t particularly sound like a lie, or like he’s annoyed with Patrick for speaking.

“So I was thinking.” Patrick takes a deep breath against the fluttering in his stomach. “We haven’t consummated the marriage yet.”

Gareth looks up. Maybe it’s the sharpness of the motion, but it occurs to Patrick suddenly that he’s not sure how Gareth will react. All he’s seen is a small-talk veneer at dinners, occasionally in Gareth’s office.

Gareth’s mouth curves into a small smile. “Are you concerned about the marriage’s legitimacy?”

He manages to make it sound like it’s an adorable childish concern. _Yes_ , Patrick wants to say, _I am_ , but all he says aloud is, “You might at least want an heir.”

“You’re sweet to be concerned,” Gareth says. “But we have plenty of time for that.”

It’s a dismissal. A day ago, Patrick would have taken it as one. But he can’t afford to right now. “I just think,” he says, taking a step forward, “that we ought to consummate the relationship at least once. For formality’s sake.”

Gareth’s face closes over. “I don’t think it’s necessary for you to keep coming into my rooms at night,” he says. “I think the servants have gotten enough of an idea by now, don’t you?”

Patrick breathes in, sharply. It hadn’t seriously occurred to him until now that Gareth would refuse point-blank. But then, it also hadn’t occurred to him that someone who married him voluntarily would look at him like that.

There’s a part of him that still wants to find something to say. He can’t just let this issue go. But he also can’t just stuff Gareth’s dick up his ass. Maybe if he were better at this, he’d know how to seduce him—but he doesn’t. He wouldn’t know where to start.

He turns and goes through the connecting door to his suite and ends up sitting on his bed with his hands under his thighs, trying to understand how he ended up in this situation. Did Gareth ever intend to sleep with him? And if not—why would he marry him in the first place?

It’s late, long past a reasonable time for letter writing. But Patrick lights an extra lamp at his desk and sits down to write to his family.

It’s not a long letter. Patrick tries to make it clear what he’s telling them without saying it outright, because he’s still not sure he trusts the post. He’s not even sure what he’s hoping for from this—just that it’s suddenly clear to him that there’s something deeply wrong in his marriage to Gareth, and it isn’t something he should keep from them any longer. Maybe it’s something he should have told them long before this.

He seals the letter and puts it on the corner of his desk. He looks at the paper that was spread out under it: the note from Jonny. The second one, unsigned. _If you have any explanations…_

None of the things he’s thinking can be trusted to paper. But Jonny will be on the other side of that door in just a few hours. Patrick stares at a blank piece of paper for long moments of indecision before he scrawls, _Come in and see me as soon as you get here._

He knocks on the guard door and hands the note to a startled Hartsy and Shawzy. Patrick never goes out at this time of night. “Will you give this to Captain Toews when he shows up for his shift?” Patrick asks.

They nod at him and take the note.

Patrick expects not to be able to sleep. The prospect of seeing Jonny—even for a conversation, maybe just about the movement of troops in Rangeland—has his body buzzing. But he’s tired, too, the fatigue pulling heavy at his limbs, and he gives in and lets his eyes close for a little while.

The next thing he knows he’s waking up with the sunlight, still in his clothing, alone.

Jonny didn’t come.

“What the fuck,” Patrick mutters. It’s possible Jonny did come, he guesses, and saw that Patrick was asleep and left. He should have been clearer in his instructions.

He goes out of his bedroom into the sitting room, where his letter to his family is still on the corner of the desk. He’d be annoyed by that, except that there’s no tray of food yet, so the castle servants haven’t been by.

He opens the door to the guardroom, and Seabs and Duncs jump to attention. “When I say ‘as soon as you get here,’ I mean even if I’m asleep,” Patrick snaps.

They both look really confused. Seabs hands him a folded piece of paper. “Shawzy said to give you this. He says, sorry, Jonny wasn’t on shift last night.”

It’s Patrick’s own note, still sealed. “What? Who was on shift?”

“Sharpy and Saader,” Duncs says, but Patrick isn’t really listening. It was probably Jonny’s day off, or he reassigned his shift. It’s frustrating but reparable. Patrick can still get a note to him if he sends it to the guard barracks.

“Would one of you—” he starts to ask, but he’s interrupted by a sharp knocking at the outer door.

Sharpy’s outside, his normally perfect hair ruffled. “Sorry, your highness,” he says. “But I thought you’d want to know—”

Patrick’s glad he never changed out of his clothes when he sets off for the throne room at top speed a minute or two later. He hasn’t gone there very often; Gareth only sits there to receive foreign dignitaries or for the hearing of petitions that happens every few weeks. Sharpy promises he’s there now, though, meting out the sentences.

A rebellion in Winnipeg. Patrick’s been hearing the vague rumors of unrest in the northwest, but he’d thought that meant grumbling among the commoners, maybe a few radicals who were trying to raise a fight. Not a full-on uprising led by the archduke himself.

“They haven’t caught Jonny’s father yet,” Sharpy says as they hurry along. Patrick wasn’t willing to wait for the whole story before heading out. “They got wind of the conspiracy before the troops were mobilized, and the king already had his armies in place to hold them in. The archduke got out before they set the perimeter.”

The troop concentrations in the west. So it hadn’t been about Kanedom at all. “But they have Jonny.”

Sharpy nods. “Took him out of his bed in the barracks last night. It’s like he didn’t even know it was coming.”

He probably didn’t. Patrick can imagine Jonny conspiring against the king for the right reasons, but he can’t imagine Jonny having reasons like that and not giving Patrick at least a hint of them. Unless the notes about troop movements were supposed to be hints—but no. Jonny sounded honestly baffled. Patrick can’t believe he had any idea of what his father was up to.

“What kind of father doesn’t even give his kid a heads up he’s going to rebel,” Duncs mutters. Patrick would like to know the same thing.

They’ve reached the doors to the throne room. Patrick stops to smooth his clothing and adjust the circlet on his head. The three guards take up positions behind him, and Patrick takes a deep breath and strides in.

Gareth is sitting in the larger of the two thrones at the end of the room, next to the one Patrick hasn’t sat in since the coronation. He’s conferring in low voices with one of his councilors. There aren’t any prisoners visible: only courtiers, looking out of place in a mix of day- and nighttime clothing, but full of titillated energy. Patrick supposes it isn’t every day there’s a major rebellion. Of course they’d be entertained.

A fair number of them turn to look at him as he enters. Patrick keeps his eyes forward and walks as steadily as he can toward the throne, where he drops into a deep bow.

There’s a murmur at that. The prince consort wouldn’t normally need to bow to the king when entering the throne room like this. “Your majesty,” Patrick says, in the formal voice he hasn’t had to use in months now. “I come to plead for mercy towards one who has been a faithful servant.”

He can just see, at the edge of his field of vision, Gareth straightening up. It’s probably indignation—Patrick is taking a big risk here. But all Gareth says is, “Go on.”

“I applaud your majesty’s swiftness in quelling the unlawful uprising to the north,” Patrick says, still bent over one knee. “It is for the son of the archduke that I would plead mercy. He has served me faithfully these many months, and I will vouch for his lack of involvement in any scheme that would harm our crown.”

Gareth’s voice when he responds is suspiciously mild. “How can you be so sure,” he asks, “that Jonathan is innocent?”

This is where it gets tricky, because _I love him and am pretty sure he’d tell me if he were rebelling_ isn’t going to cut it. “I have happened to spend much time in the company of the younger Toews these past months, and I have been privy to his feelings of loyalty toward the crown.” If you leave out the brief act of treason where his cock was inside the crown’s consort. “His actions have been impeccable, without a trace of revolutionary impulse, and his very presence in the castle this previous night speaks to his ignorance of the scheme.”

“You seem to have a great deal of knowledge of the young lord’s thoughts,” Gareth says.

Patrick dips his head, hoping the tension in his shoulders doesn’t show. “He has been a valued companion and a faithful guard. Your majesty is known for your great and generous mercy. I pray you will bestow it upon him, in the lack of any clear sign of wrongdoing.”

His heart is beating quickly. He doesn’t know if the mercy thing is true—he’s never heard Gareth described that way. But he figures a little flattery never hurts. And he’s really hoping there _isn’t_ any clear sign of wrongdoing.

He raises his eyes to Gareth, who’s looking down at him impassively. “The boy has already been sentenced to death.”

Patrick hopes it’s not visible on his face how much every part of his body seizes up at that. He has to keep it together—has to sound calm. “For the love your majesty bears me,” he says, in as steady a voice as possible, “and for the dignity of our crown, I would ask you to reconsider.”

The silence is crushing. It’s all Patrick can do to stay there, kneeling down, and not say anything further—he knows that getting upset at this point will just make things worse. And if he opens his mouth again, he’s going to sound upset. He’s going to get up off the floor and run to wherever Jonny’s being held and bust him out singlehandedly.

He’s not ruling that out. But first he’s going to kneel here, muscles quivering, the whole throne room silent around him while the king considers—

“I’m afraid I cannot release,” the king says. Patrick’s hands twitch toward his sword. Not yet, not yet; can’t give away his intention. “But perhaps I have underestimated his use as a hostage. He shall be kept under guard until his father is apprehended.”

Patrick sucks in too loud a breath. “You are just and merciful,” he says, bowing deeply again.

He’s shaking as he walks out of the hall with Sharpy and Duncs and Seabs on his heels, and when they’re around the corner and alone, he stops, and he can hear the others let out a breath. “That was magnificent,” Duncs says.

“Really well done,” Seabs says.

“Remind me to have you argue for me if I’m ever sentenced to death,” Sharpy says.

They’re standing close. It feels good, feels like the only thing that’s keeping him together. Maybe he wasn’t quite right when he thought Jonny was the only person he could show emotion to in this kingdom.

“Sharpy,” Patrick says. “Will you find out where he’s being held?”

Sharpy comes back an hour or so later, after Patrick’s managed to keep down some breakfast. All three of them accompany Patrick to the basement of the castle.

He’s expecting some kind of dungeon. He’s not far off—there are bars on the door, and the air is dank and cold. But this is obviously a room meant for imprisoned nobility. The apartment visible beyond the barred door is almost as well-appointed as Patrick’s own.

Jonny isn’t visible through the barred door. He must be in the room beyond. There are four guards standing in front of the door, which seems like overkill. Their leader bows when Patrick approaches, and Patrick affixes a cold look on his face. He wants to make sure they know the prince consort is looking out for Jonny—for whatever that’s worth. Patrick would have said not much, a day ago, but by now the whole court knows he was able to successfully argue for the life of a convicted prisoner. These guards will believe it’s worth something.

“I wish to have a private audience with the prisoner,” Patrick says. “You can stand guard at either end of the hall.”

There’s a moment where he’s not sure if he’s going to be obeyed. Then the leader says, “We cannot let you into the room, your highness. It’s our orders.”

Patrick keeps the cold look on his face. “And do your orders come from someone higher up than me?”

It works. They unlock the door to Jonny’s cell.

“Should we…” Seabs says at Patrick’s elbow.

“Stay out here with the other guards.” Patrick’s not sure what the conversation will look like in there, but he thinks it’s better not to have witnesses. And even if they were scared of what Jonny would do to him, they’re not stupid enough to think any unarmed person can overpower Patrick while he has a sword.

Patrick’s prepared to knock on the door to the other room inside the cell. But Jonny must have heard something, because he comes out before Patrick can knock.

His whole face changes when he sees Patrick. “Patrick—” he says, taking a quick step forward, and then cuts off, eyes going to the door. There’s no one visible at the moment on the far side of the bars, but Patrick has no doubt they’re nearby.

“Let’s go into the bedroom,” he says.

It’s so good to see Jonny alive. Patrick feels like his body has been wound tight since Sharpy knocked on the door this morning, and seeing Jonny standing tall and healthy and unharmed makes Patrick want to collapse in his arms and sob.

He can’t do that. He leans against the door.

Jonny looks awful: face pale with circles under his eyes, like he hasn’t slept in a day and a half. Patrick wants to touch him.

“I thought I might not—” Jonny says, making an abortive movement of his hands toward Patrick before cutting himself off. Patrick crosses his arms over his chest.

“I want to know,” he says, “if you had anything to do with your father’s rebellion.”

Jonny rears back like he’s been struck. “What the fuck, Pat. How can you even ask me that?”

Patrick’s hands are clenched in the sides of his tunic. “It’s a valid question.”

Jonny turns away. “I thought you might have argued for me,” he says in a low voice, running his hand through his hair. “Fuck—”

“I did,” Patrick says, more loudly than he intended.

“Then how can you ask me—”

“Because I know you,” Patrick says. “You wouldn’t have rebelled without a good reason. But if there _was_ some urgent reason I didn’t know about, some injustice going on—of course you’d do something about it. I’d have an easier time believing that you _did_ rebel than that you stood by and—” He didn’t mean to say all this. His cheeks are hot.

Jonny’s cheeks are pink as well. “I didn’t rebel,” he says quietly. “And my father didn’t, either.”

“What?”

“I know _him,_ ” Jonny says. “There have been plenty of times over the years when he’s disagreed with the king’s policies. And when he does, he comes to the capital to argue them—sometimes he even wins. That’s what happened last year, with the peace treaty with Kanedom. He argued for three months to get the king to agree to that one.”

Huh. Patrick hadn’t known Jonny’s father was involved in that.

“If there were anything like that happening now,” Jonny says, “any reason for him to rebel, I would have heard about it. Everyone would have heard about it. And there’s been nothing.”

Patrick tries to make sense of this. “So…maybe there was something sudden, and so horrible that he couldn’t wait to…”

“ _No,_ ” Jonny says. “He believes in the power of speech more than anything in the world. He would be here arguing for _months_ before he’d resort to swords.”

“So then why did he rebel?”

“Why did we _hear_ he rebelled,” Jonny says.

It’s a legitimate reframing. Patrick cocks his head in acknowledgment.

“There are any number of things that could have happened,” Jonny says. “Maybe there was a coup in Winnipeg. Maybe one of my father’s nobles seized power and decided to try for a rebellion while it could still be blamed on my father if it failed. Maybe a foreign power to the north is trying to use this as a cover for an invasion—Calgary, or Alberta.”

“Or Kanedom,” Patrick fills in.

“Would they?” Jonny says, like he’s been waiting for the opening.

Patrick’s had enough assumptions shaken up today that he takes a minute before shaking his head. “My parents would do a lot to avoid war.” He waves at himself. “Case in point. They would fight if they had to, if the marriage had failed and it was the only way to protect their people, but they wouldn’t be looking for an excuse.”

“And we still haven’t mentioned the most obvious possibility,” Jonny says.

“Which is?”

“Maybe there was no rebellion at all,” Jonny says, “and Gareth set this up as a way to take my father down.”

His lips are pressed hard together. It’s obvious which possibility he believes is true.

“I’m sorry,” Jonny says. “I know he’s your husband—”

For whatever that’s worth. “No,” Patrick says. “It’s just, why would he do that?”

“Will you find out?” Jonny asks, urgently. “There’s not a lot I can do from in here.” He waves at the four walls of the room. “But my father’s life could be—”

“Of course.” Patrick doesn’t even have to think about it. “Where should I start?”

Jonny looks like he might start crying. “There are a few people I trust,” he says, and gives Patrick a list, nobles in the city he’s met once or twice or not at all. Patrick nods, and takes mental notes, and—and then there isn’t a lot of reason for Patrick to stay.

He can feel the pause where they both realize it. Patrick’s belly aches, and he suddenly wants to tell Jonny—wants to tell him so badly the words are barely stoppered behind his teeth. There’s a part of Jonny that’s growing inside of him, and he wants Jonny to know.

There’s no good reason to tell him, though, and plenty of reasons not to. Jonny’s in prison, fearing for his father and his life; Patrick doesn’t need to give him another reason to be afraid. Telling him would be entirely selfish.

Patrick takes a steadying breath in against the desire. “Will you be okay in here?”

“Yes,” Jonny says, “But—”

He takes a step closer to Patrick, and Patrick can’t breathe. He should leave. He should turn around and find the doorknob and get out of here. But Jonny’s looking at him like that, face naked and afraid, and Patrick steps forward and buries himself in his arms.

He’s not sure how long they stand there, holding each other. He wants to do it for years. But it’s so good, even for just a few minutes: to be exactly where he’s supposed to be, in the one spot in the universe that feels unalterably right.

“Thank you,” Jonny whispers into his hair, and Patrick can only make a noise in response. He lifts his head and brushes his lips over Jonny’s.

It’s a mistake. He can feel it immediately. The kiss is chaste, but the fire it ignites is not. Patrick gasps with the sudden intense desire to open his mouth and devour Jonny whole, throw him down on the bed and tear at each other’s clothing and grapple with each other until—

He steps back. Jonny lets him, blinking, eyes glazed in a way that tells Patrick he felt the exact same thing.

“I’ll let you know what I find out,” Patrick says, voice tight, and then he gets out of there.

Duncs and Seabs and Sharpy fall into step behind him as he leaves. “Jonny’s okay,” he says once they’re out of earshot of the other guards. Then he heads back to his room to write a note to Sid.

***

“Stan’s a good guy,” Sid says, as the carriage pulls up to Lord Bowman’s estate the next day. “I’ve known him for years. I don’t know if he’ll be able to find anything out, but he’ll listen to you.”

Patrick feels like he’s doing the wrong thing by being here. It feels different, somehow, going to talk to nobles who aren’t of his generation without Gareth’s knowledge—less like making friends and more like political maneuvering. Which it is, in a way.

Lord Bowman is Patrick’s father age, patient and soft-spoken. There’s small talk at the start, which is tougher than it usually is: it’s hard to answer questions about how he’s finding Rangeland when Gareth is barely speaking to him and Jonny’s locked in the dungeon. But he makes do. He was trained for this.

Finally there’s a lull in conversation, and Patrick says, “I was surprised to hear about the archduke.”

A shadow passes over Lord Bowman’s face, and Patrick doesn’t have to say much more to get him to talk about it. It turns out he knows the family well—better than Patrick would have guessed, since Jonny’s never mentioned him before. But Jonny never talked about his connections much. “I can’t imagine what would have prompted him to rebel,” Lord Bowman says.

It’s a risk, what Patrick’s about to say next—but he came here to take risks, and he likes what he’s seen of Lord Bowman so far. “His son suggested to me that maybe he didn’t.”

There’s a short, loaded silence. Then Lord Bowman heaves a sigh and gets up to walk over to the window. “Of course Jonny would think that.”

“Does that mean you don’t agree?” Patrick asks.

“Who can say?” Bowman says slowly. “Bryan has long been opposed to the king’s war-mongering. He would certainly be willing to rebel, if the cause were great enough. But going to war himself, when the kingdom is more peaceful than it’s been in a decade…I will admit that it doesn’t quite make sense to me.”

Patrick’s heart is beating quickly. “Sid tells me that your troops are some of those holding the perimeter around Winnipeg,” Patrick says. “Do you think your officers might agree to find out more about what happened?”

Bowman turns around and gives him a considering look. “How far are you willing to push this?”

_All the way_ , Patrick thinks. _Until Jonny is free._ “A rebellion in the kingdom is serious business. I don’t want there to be any confusion about it.”

Bowman nods slowly. “All right. Yes. I’ll see what I can find out.”

***

It’s a good first step. Patrick isn’t willing to trust the freedom of Jonny and his father to one person, though, especially one he’s only just met. He goes to see Sir Wirtz the next day, another of Jonny’s father’s friends, and has a similar conversation. It’s riskier, with every new person he involves—but there’s also a greater chance of success. Patrick can’t leave any stone unturned on this.

He’s sitting in the central courtyard of the castle after his visit, pondering whether there’s anything else he can be doing to investivate, when the Kanish ambassador approaches him.

“Your highness,” he says warmly. “I hear you went to visit the young Lord Toews in his confinement.”

Patrick’s instantly on the alert. Dverny has a lot of connections; he might be an ideal partner in this. “Yes, he was very surprised at his father’s rebellion,” he says.

“I’m sure he would seem so,” Dverny says, and Patrick mentally revises all the questions he was planning to ask. “I wanted to drop a word of warning in your ear.”

“Yes?” Patrick asks, as pleasantly as he can through a suddenly tight jaw.

“I know you’ve formed a connection with the boy,” Dverny says, “but that whole family is dangerous these days, and you know how important it is that you maintain a good reputation here. I wouldn’t risk it by paying social calls.”

“It was hardly a social call,” Patrick says before he can think better of it.

“Still.” Dverny smiles in what’s probably meant to be a kind, paternal way. “I would caution you to focus your energies on more productive avenues. I hear you’ve gotten to know the Crosby boy?”

Yes, through Jonny, Patrick doesn’t say. “You’re right,” he says instead. “I’ll be more careful in how I spend my time.”

He turns to his guards as soon as Dverny is gone. It’s Duncs and Seabs again this afternoon, and he thinks he knows enough about where their loyalties lie to risk it. “Can you guys get a message to the Islander ambassador, in secret?” he says. He doesn’t know if Tavares will be able or willing to help. But he already seems to have a low opinion of Gareth, which can only help right now. “And if you guys find out anything on your own—”

“Of course,” Duncs says, looking offended that Patrick even needed to say anything.

Patrick resists all temptation to comment on the Winnipeg rebellion at dinner, even when the conversation turns to it. Apparently the province’s armies are all being disarmed and disbanded, and they’re hopeful about being able to lift the perimeter soon. “Though of course we should maintain the concentration of soldiers in the west,” General Quinn says. “We can’t let our guard down while the archduke is still at large.”

“Of course not. We’ll stay at the highest alert,” Gareth says. He’s been in a good mood all evening, and has been paying about as little attention to Patrick than the last couple of days. It’s a nice reminder that while he may have given in on Patrick’s request yesterday, Patrick doesn’t have any actual sway over his emotions. Patrick never thought otherwise.

It still feels strange to go straight into his own rooms after dinner. At least Shawzy and Hartsy have stopped giving him weird looks about it.

The next day he’s planning to go with Sid to see Lord Quenneville, the third name on Jonny’s list, and hopefully set up a meeting with Tavares. But he doesn’t get a chance for either, because a servant shows up while Patrick’s in the middle of training with the guards.

“Your highness,” the servant says, dropping to his knees after the quickest possible look of surprise around the room. “The king requires your presence in the throne room.”

Well, that’s unusual. “All right,” Patrick says. “I’ll go change.”

“My apologies, your highness,” the servant says, “but the king’s request is urgent.”

Patrick feels the mood shift slightly. There are palace guards standing behind the servant. Rather a lot of them, actually. Patrick has a bad feeling about this. “Of course,” he says.

Patrick makes a show of sheathing his sword and taking off his wrist guards. “We’re going to follow behind you,” Sharpy whispers in his ear, and Patrick nods as subtly as possible. He wishes he could tell Sharpy not to worry about it, but he doesn’t have the greatest feeling about this.

The servant and the palace guards escort Patrick down to the throne room. Duncs and Seabs come with him, as his guards on duty, but they feel somewhat irrelevant next to the ten palace guards behind them. They have better sword training, Patrick reminds himself. The palace guards are probably as bad as his own guards were at the start—which is to say, laughable. But still. Three against ten isn’t great odds.

It’s irrelevant. He’s not going to need to fight. This is probably something else concerning the Winnipeg rebellion. It might even be a good thing: maybe Gareth is consulting Patrick’s judgment at last.

“Ah,” Gareth says as Patrick shows up in the doorway of the throne room. “My so-called consort.”

Okay. So much for that theory.

Patrick has a strong impulse to turn around and leave, but the palace guards are crowding behind him. He steps into the throne room.

Seabs and Duncs are right at his shoulders, close enough that their arms brush his a couple of times. Patrick doesn’t mind. He hopes Sharpy and the others are still there—not that they’ll be able to do much, if worse comes to worst.

“Your majesty,” he says, bowing.

“No need to pretend obeisance,” Gareth says sharply. “The whole court knows by now how you’ve betrayed me.”

Patrick snaps his head up. Gareth knows—but he can’t. Jonny’s the only other person who knows. Jonny, who’s in prison right now, available for interrogation—

“Do you deny it?” Gareth asks.

Patrick’s mouth is dry. There’s a part of him that wants to announce it to the whole courtroom: _Yes, I slept with him, because he’s noble and good and a million times better than you and you wouldn’t touch me anyway._ But he knows better than to dig his own grave. “You’ll have to tell me the charges for me to deny them,” he says.

Gareth laughs softly. “I knew it was a mistake to marry you,” he says in a voice that will carry. “A boy, to sully my bed, against all the rules of nature. If I hadn’t listened to the counsel of weaker minds, I would never have considered it.”

He’s putting on a show, Patrick realizes hazily. Trying to distance himself from Patrick in front of the court.

“But that advice has proved its quality.” Gareth pulls out a piece of paper. “Conspiring with the rebels to send troop locations to Kanedom. I should have expected this kind of treachery.”

Patrick catches a glimpse of the writing on the paper. It’s Jonny’s list of troop distributions, the one that was on his desk.

“Well?” Gareth says.

Patrick can’t keep in a laugh. It comes out kind of choked. “I came here to prevent a war,” he says, “not start one.”

“To prevent a war, or hold one off long enough for your own country’s armies to mobilize at a time when we were weakened by internal strife?” Gareth asks. “I notice you wrote them another letter last week.” And then, horror of horrors, he starts to read it. “’I never expected to feel at home here. But I was still hoping I could carry out the plan you entrusted to me…’”

The words are private; they’re out of context. Patrick recognizes the futility of shouting that, but his hands are clenched at his sides. He was trying to be discreet, not talk about Gareth’s failure to fuck him in a letter traveling hundreds of miles, and now his own discretion is being twisted against him.

“Guards,” Gareth says softly, “bind his hands.”

This is when Patrick needs to protest. But he’s preoccupied by the knowledge that’s slowly sinking in: if Gareth has that whole letter, he knows Patrick wasn’t conspiring. This isn’t a misunderstanding. This is Gareth framing him.

That means it’s the court he needs to convince, not Gareth. “Your majesty,” he starts to say, but it’s too late: the guards are already taking his sword and binding his hands, and Duncs and Seabs are shouting, so that Patrick can’t even be heard.

“Those guards as well,” Gareth says. “Detain them until we can figure out where their loyalties lie.”

Seabs and Duncs are manhandled away from Patrick, shouting into the hands pressed over their mouths.

Patrick’s heart is thundering as he looks up at Gareth. He wonders how long Gareth was planning on. Since the beginning? Did Patrick’s investigations into the Winnipeg rebellion just force the timing?

“I’m so glad I never lowered myself to sleep with you,” Gareth says, a sneer on his mouth. “This marriage could never have been anything but a sham.”

“Really?” Patrick says. “Because it didn’t feel like that when you were fucking me.”

Blotches of red appear on Gareth’s cheeks, though he keeps his cool. “Excuse me? I never touched you.”

“If you never touched me,” Patrick says, “then how can I be carrying your child?”

Gareth’s eyes flare, a satisfying fraction of an inch, and a murmur goes around the room. Gareth doesn’t have an heir—a big problem for a ruler, especially one without nieces and nephews waiting in the wings. Patrick knows that at least some of the coolness towards him has been been skepticism about his ability to bear children. If he’s carrying Gareth’s child—

“If you’re carrying any child, it’s a bastard,” Gareth says.

“You would speak that way about your own heir?” Patrick says.

He’s successfully provoked a reaction—but he knows, as he watches Gareth’s face harden, that he’s gone about this the wrong way. Gareth’s intentions were cold to him before—he might have killed him, but he might just as easily have shut Patrick up like he did Jonny and used him as a bargaining chip against Kanedom. That’s probably why he was bothering to invalidate the marriage in the eyes of the court: that would only be worth doing if Patrick were going to stay alive. But now Patrick’s messed with the plan, and Gareth is mad.

“Guards,” Gareth starts, and Patrick has the dizzying realization that he might lose his head right here and now. He hears a clanging sound and flinches away—but it’s coming from far away, from the back of the hall.

There’s shouting and the sounds of fighting. Patrick tries to turn to look, but he’s still behind held by the hands and the shoulders. “Guards!” Gareth says again, a command in itself this time, and the guard around Patrick loosens enough for him to turn his head, just in time to see Jonny burst through the door.

He looks like a hero in a fairy tale. His sword is up, and he’s followed by a dozen other swordsmen: Patrick’s guard. Patrick feels his whole chest swell at the sight of them. They’re immediately engulfed by the palace guard, of course, at least three times as many men—but Patrick’s been training these guards for months. They won’t be taken down so easily.

He’s proven right more quickly than he expected. The guards are toppling, falling left and right, Jonny’s men carving through them like they’re barely there.

“Send for more guards to suppress this rebellion!” Gareth is shouting. “Execute the prisoners now.”

That doesn’t seem very fair, Patrick thinks, distracted; it’s hardly any prisoners’ fault that Jonny is coming to rescue him. Then he realizes Gareth means him.

Patrick rears up to fight, but he’s already being forced to his knees. He manages to get his hands in front of his forehead before it crashes against the marble floor. Patrick feels time stretch out; he can’t see anything, can only imagine the sword going up behind him. He has time to think, _Jonny,_ and—

There’s a crash of metal above him. “Don’t you touch him,” Jonny says, a growl in his voice, and Patrick raises his head to see him spit the guard on the end of his sword.

“Here,” Seabs says, and Patrick’s bonds are being sliced and his sword hilt shoved into his hand. He stands up and whirls around to fight.

Most of the guards in the hall are out of commission by now, groaning on the ground. Patrick ends up fighting the remaining cluster, shoulder to shoulder with Jonny. “Get to the back door,” Jonny shouts above the noise, and Patrick nods and knocks the sword out of his opponent’s hands.

“Stop them!” Gareth shouts, but there’s no one left to follow his order: Jonny and Patrick have trained Patrick’s guards too well, and the only palace guards on their feet are busy staggering away.

“Reinforcements on the way!” Saader shouts from the door, and Patrick and his guards hurry out, spilling into the hallway. “This way,” Saader says, leading them at a run toward the southern door. “Sharpy’s got horses.”

Patrick counts the guards as they go: all there. “Where are we going?” he asks.

“Kanedom,” Jonny says, and then they’re bursting outside and under the portcullis to find Sharpy waiting for them with horses.

Only two horses, Bootsy and another. “Where are all the others?” Patrick asks.

“We’ll go saddle our own,” Sharpy says. “Don’t worry, there won’t be a massive manhunt for _us._ ”

Duncs is pushing Patrick towards Bootsy, and he swings up into the saddle. “Go north to Winnipeg,” Jonny says to the others. He’s putting something in Sharpy’s hand: a ring. “My father will help you. Lay some false trails if you can.”

Sharpy nods. There are horns sounding behind them. Patrick takes one last look at this group of guards, these people who have stood watch over him for months and who just rebelled against their own king to save him. “Let’s go,” he says, and he and Jonny thunder away.

***

Patrick’s been doing more riding lately, but nothing could have prepared him for a full-on full-day ride for his life. They get past city limits before the pursuit is close on their heels and bolt for the mountains. The ground is still soft with summer rains. They’ll be easy to track.

The worst part is that they can’t wear out the horses. Jonny leads them south into a forest and then has them slow to a walk. “There’s a stony area up ahead; we can change directions and slow them down a little,” he says, but it’s torture, taking slow human-speed steps when they know their pursuers will be making top speed toward them.

There are only a few passes through the mountains to Kanedom. “Three that we could easily get to from here,” Jonny says, reining in. “Maybe four others we might try. You know Gareth—what would he do?”

Patrick doesn’t know Gareth that well, but this one’s easy. “He’ll block them all. We have to get through before he does.”

Jonny nods. “The fastest one, then.”

“Yes. No,” Patrick says. The fastest one is the road Gareth and Patrick took into Rangeland after the wedding. “That’s a trade road. There’ll be guards.”

“They won’t know yet,” Jonny says.

“They’ll have signals for if they need to close the road,” Patrick says. “The second-fastest.”

“The second-fastest is a straight cut through rock,” Jonny says, and neither of them has to say why that would be bad. Patrick can feel his shoulders hunching at the thought of arrows from behind.

They end up taking the slowest pass, barely passable by horse. They keep having to get off and walk so their horses can navigate the uneven ground. The only consolation is that Gareth’s men will have at least as much trouble.

They make it to the crest by mid-afternoon, and then they face the descent. “We’re not going to be able to do this on the horses,” Patrick says after an hour of attempting to pick their way down.

Jonny makes a frustrated noise. “We can’t just leave them here. The army will find them.”

“So at least they won’t die in the wilderness,” Patrick says.

“We can make it on the horses,” Jonny says stubbornly, but they really can’t. They have to take the blankets and saddle bags off and carry them themselves.

“Sorry, Bootsy,” Patrick whispers to his horse as he takes her saddle and bridle off. He hopes the guard does come through here.

It’s almost as difficult on foot, laden down with the saddlebags full of the food and water Sharpy was able to scrounge up on short notice. Patrick’s wearing his training gear, which means he’s in pretty good boots, and Jonny has on his guard gear. But there are at least three times when one of them slips badly enough that Patrick thinks they might go off the mountain. And he keeps hearing noises from behind that make him take stupid risks.

Patrick’s stumbling-tired by the time night has started to fall. “They’ll know we came this way. We have to hide,” he says, and Jonny nods and leads them off the path.

They’re down at the foothills by now, which means plenty of foliage. They find a spot where the trees are thick around a boulder, a nice hollow space on one side of it, and Patrick collapses on a smaller stone and digs into the food.

For a few minutes it’s too much of a relief to be sitting and eating for him to think about anything else. Then he realizes that Jonny is sitting a few stones away, instead of right next to him, and that he isn’t looking at Patrick.

Probably he’s just tired. But it makes the fatigue sit more heavily on Patrick’s shoulders. He doesn’t want to feel like this on top of everything else. . “We’ll have to get new horses at the first town we reach,” he says. “I still have my signet—we can use it as collateral until my parents can send money. Or they can run off with the ring. I don’t care.” It’s the Rangeland badger. He doesn’t care if he never sees it again.

Jonny nods. “You think we can get to Kane Castle soon enough to warn them?”

Patrick’s been trying not to think about that question. All those troops concentrated in the western side of Rangeland; the excuse of the rebellion in the northwest that didn’t quite make sense—a rebellion by the man who’d argued most strongly for piece. A diplomatic marriage designed to deter any preparations from Kanedom while Rangeland started mobilizing in secret. “I don’t know,” he says. “Gareth’s obviously been planning this for a while.”

“I can’t believe he hid it from you,” Jonny says.

Something’s off. Patrick can’t shake the feeling. Not that he expected Jonny to fall into his arms while they’re on the run or anything, but…something’s off.

Maybe it’s just the resentment from having your father framed for treason and then having to commit treason yourself and flee the kingdom. Jonny lost basically everything today, while Patrick is getting everything back: his family, his friends, his home at the expense of Jonny’s. If Patrick were in Jonny’s shoes, he might feel a little resentful, too.

He’s about to open his mouth to apologize, when Jonny says, “I’m sorry about what happened.”

It’s still weird—stiff. Jonny’s looking away from him, his silhouette outlined in the fading light. “What, the thing where the guy I married tried to kill me to declare war on my country? Yeah, that wasn’t the best. But the part where you rescued me was pretty good.”

“I know he wasn’t—” Jonny fiddles with the saddlebag on the rock next to him. “But still. I’m sorry your child will have to grow up without its father.”

Patrick’s breath stops in his chest. “Jonny,” he says, and it’s hard to get the word out. “Jonny. Why does my child have to grow up without its father?”

“I mean, you’re a father, obviously, I didn’t mean,” Jonny says quickly. “I guess also—congratulations. I didn’t say that before. Sorry the other father turned out to be such a—well. You know.”

Ohhhh. “Jonny,” Patrick says, a smile breaking over his face even when he tries to hold it back. “Gareth isn’t the father of my child.”

Jonny’s head snaps up. “He’s not?”

“I never slept with Gareth.”

Jonny looks so confused. It’s kind of adorable. “But I thought—”

“The only person I’ve ever slept with,” Patrick says, “is you.”

Jonny’s eyes go impossibly wide. “But,” he says. “But.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says, grinning a little too hard, the word getting half-strangled in his throat.

Jonny stands up abruptly. He looks kind of lost, like he’s going to stride off into the forest in front of him. Then Jonny turns and comes over and sits on the rock next to Patrick and puts a hand behind his head and kisses him.

It’s about ten times as good as Patrick remembered. Turns out his memory is really not good at capturing the all-encompassing feeling of Jonny’s mouth opening to his. And his memory of it was very, very good.

They kiss until Patrick’s breathless, until he’s lying on his back on the rock, and then Jonny rolls onto the ground and pulls Patrick down on top of him and they kiss some more. It’s so warm and so good and so _Jonny_. Patrick’s so intent on it that he doesn’t care that it’s cold and they’re the middle of the woods being pursued by like half the army of Rangeland. He has Jonny.

Jonny’s jaw is rougher than usual after his confinement in the quasi-dungeon, and it’s burning Patrick’s cheeks and he doesn’t even care. He wants more of it, actually, more of a sting. He bites Jonny’s lip and Jonny moans and they’re both so hard and maybe Patrick doesn’t have to give this up.

Maybe Patrick can have Jonny like this forever.

It feels too good to be true, but Jonny is panting under him now, sliding his hands under Patrick’s clothes so that the cool air nips at Patrick’s skin. One of his hands slides under his pants to palm Patrick’s ass. “Jonny,” Patrick says. “I don’t think we—have anything.”

Jonny groans, and Patrick knows how he feels. He wants Jonny inside of him again, to recapture the sensation that’s been haunting his dreams. “It’s okay,” he says, “you already got me pregnant,” and Jonny curses and flips them and tugs Patrick’s pants open and puts his mouth on Patrick’s cock.

Patrick shouts. He knows he shouldn’t—who even knows how close their pursuers are—but he can’t help it. He didn’t even know this was something people could do to each other, and now Jonny’s mouth is wet and hot over the tip of his cock and he’s going to—

He comes in Jonny’s mouth sooner than he wants to, an overpowering rush that makes him throw his head back and cry out again, and then Jonny’s pulling own pants open and stripping his cock. Patrick watches hungrily as Jonny slides his fist over his cock; there are so many other things he wants to do with that cock. So many other things he might get to do, now, Jonny’s cock hot and thick in his hand and his ass and his mouth and…

Jonny gives a strangled cry and shoots white all over Patrick’s stomach. “Wow,” Patrick says, and Jonny laughs, a bright, free, sound, and bends down to kiss him.

The come starts cooling on Patrick’s stomach, and Jonny gets out his handkerchief to wipe it off. He leaves his hand over Patrick’s stomach after it’s clean, lying down on his side to kiss Patrick’s mouth while his hand is hot over his belly.

“We’re really—actually?” he asks.

“I’m pretty sure,” Patrick says. “I was so worried about—since Gareth and I hadn’t slept together. I was so afraid of what would happen.”

It feels good to be able to tell Jonny now. “I wouldn’t have let him do anything to you,” Jonny whispers against his mouth, and it’s pretty believable, considering he just fought his own guard and fled his country to protect him.

“I know. We’re going to have a family,” Patrick says, and the whole world feels like it’s tilting crazily around him, but Jonny’s holding him in his arms, keeping him safe and whole. They lie together, sharing breath, as darkness falls around them.

***

The next morning they creep out of the hills while the sun is rising and find a village. Patrick’s worried about running into soldiers from Rangeland, but there are a lot of villages in this area of Kanedom, and there couldn’t possibly have been that many soldiers who made that crossing in the dark. Patrick trades the signet ring of the prince consort of Rangeland for two fast horses and two days’ supply of food, and they ride off across the fields.

They’re running ahead of any messengers. They have no way of knowing if Rangeland troops are crossing the border yet. But they make good time, stopping for the night in a friendly group of haystacks when it gets too dark to see.

It’s late enough in summer that the nights are starting to be chilly, but Patrick has Jonny’s hot hands sliding under his shirt. He doesn’t get cold.

They reach Kane Castle around noon on their second day in Kanedom. It’s a beautiful sunny day, and the castle gates are open—no indication that anyone knows enemies are creeping up on their borders. Patrick and Jonny ride through the gates, Patrick calling out to the guards he recognizes, and they swing off their horses in the castle courtyard. “Ethan!” Patrick shouts, calling over a groom, who does a double-take on seeing him. “Take care of these, would you? We have to go see my parents.”

They make it as far as the hall inside the main doors before they run into Patrick’s sister Jessica. She drops the book she was carrying and stares. “Jess. Where’s Mom and Dad?” Patrick asks, and she stares for another moment before pointing mutely in the direction of the council room.

Every step of this castle is so familiar. Patrick leads Jonny to the council room at a jog. He wouldn’t normally burst in without permission—but this is a special circumstance, and he doesn’t hesitate before opening the door under the eyes of a very startled and confused guard.

His parents are leading a meeting of the full council. “Patrick!” his mother says, standing up. “What are you—”

“Kanedom is under attack,” Patrick says, and everyone’s expression changes.

***

Patrick and Jonny talk strategy with Patrick’s parents in the council room while the army mobilizes outside. Jonny is definitely more useful than Patrick at outlining Rangeland’s troop positioning. Patrick’s parents seem to have accepted him without question as soon as they heard what he’d done for Patrick. Patrick has no doubt there will be questions later, but right now they’re not questioning what Jonny has to say.

“We won’t be able to pick our ground,” Jonny says, “but I wouldn’t be worried about being outnumbered. I’ve fenced your son.”

Patrick hopes he’s not blushing. “Rangeland doesn’t stress swordsmanship in its soldiers,” he says.

“We’ll make them regret that,” Patrick’s father says darkly. His temper has been burning slow and hot ever since the story about how the king of Rangeland tried to kill his son as a piece of martial strategy.

Their discussion can’t take long; Patrick’s parents are both going to lead the troops to the front. “We won’t ask you to fight,” Patrick’s mom says to Jonny, who looks relieved. 

“I have no problem going,” Patrick says. His loyalty is hardly divided right now.

“Actually,” Jonny says.

Patrick shoots him a warning look—but of course Patrick’s parents notice that. “What is it?” Patrick’s father asks.

Fucking Jonny. Patrick can feel his cheeks burn. “I might be sort of…pregnant,” he says.

His parent’s eyes go wide. “I thought,” his mother says hesitantly, “you said Gareth wanted to annul the marriage…”

“Um, yeah,” Patrick says. His cheeks are seriously going to catch fire any minute. “It’s, uh. It’s not his.”

He’s not looking at Jonny. They’re not even sitting that close together, really. But he’s pretty sure, if his parents can see Jonny’s face right now, that some conclusions are being drawn.

There’s a short, stunned silence. “Well, then,” his mother says. “That does add a different wrinkle to things.”

“Maybe you boys should stay here together, then,” his father says dryly, and when Patrick does manage to look at them again, it’s not as bad as he thought. They look shocked, shaken, yeah, but not like they’re judging.

“We’ll do everything we can for the city,” Jonny says, standing up to shake his parents’ hands, and Patrick has a sudden vision: how Jonny would be, as a ruler. The way he would care about everything and try to control everything and Patrick would have arguments with him five hundred times a day and—and it would be glorious. Patrick wants to see it. He wants to be a part of it.

His parents leave, the last ones out of the council room. Patrick will have to go say goodbye to them at the gate and also maybe see his sisters and explain to everyone why he’s back, but right now he has a few minutes to be alone in the council room with Jonny. They turn to each other automatically as soon as the door is shut: Patrick’s arms sliding around Jonny’s waist and Jonny’s arms around his back. Maybe someday Patrick will get tired of this feeling, but it is definitely not today.

“I can’t believe you told them,” Patrick mutters into Jonny’s shoulder.

“I told you I wasn’t going to let anything happen to you,” Jonny says innocently, and Patrick huffs. Then Jonny says, in a different voice, “You think they’ll let me—stay?”

Patrick tilts his head back. “I think we’ll have a long future together where you make me mad fifteen times a day and I don’t listen to you nearly as much as you want and it will be glorious.”

Jonny’s smile is beautiful as it blooms across his face. “Sounds like a plan,” he says, and kisses him.

***

_Epilogue_

 

Patrick gets the news three weeks after his parents ride off to war.

He and Jonny are sitting in bed, reading the morning correspondence. It’s become one of Patrick’s favorite parts of the day: the two of them still warm and close under the covers, reading their various messages and talking through what they need to do that day. Now Patrick says, “King Gareth is dead,” and Jonny sits up and leans over his shoulder.

There’s not much more to the message. Gareth was killed in the battle to take Range Castle, after the combined Kanedom and Winnipeg armies drove the Rangeland armies back over the mountains. No one knows who struck the blow.

Jonny slides an arm around Patrick’s waist. “I guess you’re a widower now.”

It’s light, but it leaves the door open for Patrick to be upset if he wants to be. He doesn’t know if he is. Mostly it just feels strange. Once he thought he’d be building a life with the man, and now he’s dead. “I thought we decided the marriage was annulled,” he says. “Or have we been living in adultery this whole time?”

“Mm. Yes.” Jonny presses a soft kiss into the side of Patrick’s neck. “Adultery is our way of life now. Until you decide to marry me.”

“But then we’d need to find other people to be adulterous with,” Patrick says, tilting his head to give Jonny better access to his neck, and maybe this is disrespectful, but what the fuck ever. If Gareth wanted his respect, he shouldn’t have tried to kill him and invade his kingdom. “I don’t know, that seems like a lot of trouble.”

Jonny growls and pushes him flat on his back.

They’re getting married as soon as Patrick’s parents return from the war. That was part of the agreement with the archduke of Winnipeg: Rangeland would become a protectorate of Kanedom, under the rule of the archduke, and his son would marry the heir to the throne of Kanedom. Erica, riding off to war alongside Patrick’s parents, was very happy to return the position to Patrick.

“And, I mean, we’ll have two countries to rule, and a baby,” Patrick says, when Jonny breaks off from kissing him. “We’ll be so busy. Won’t it be easier if we just—”

Jonny kisses him, quick and hard. “I promise to have as many affairs with you as you like,” he says, sliding his hand between Patrick’s legs, and really, Patrick can’t object to that at all.


End file.
